Tag Archives: apple crumble

Sunday 25th April 2021 – THERE’S BEEN SOME …

… excitement out at sea this afternoon, as I noticed when I went out for my afternoon walk today.

There I was, gazing out to sea while I was leaning on the wall at the end of the car park and I could see something rather rapid heading my way from somewhere out by the Channel Islands. At first I couldn’t make out what it was. It clearly wasn’t a fishing boat travelling at that speed and so I reckoned that it might have been some kind of speedboat.

But as as came closer and closer, I could see that it was in fact a zodiac. And that was something that bewildered me because I couldn’t see where it had come from. It’s hardly likely to have come all the way over from the Channel islands.

It performed a few manoeuvres around and about and then it departed in the direction from which it had come, towing behind a small inflatable boat.

That was something rather strange because I couldn’t see where the boat had come from. I didn’t notice it being towed behind the zodiac as it came across the sea. So what was all that about then?

There was another surprise for me this morning. I sat bolt upright at about 08:10 wondering why the alarm hadn’t gone off at 06:00 like it was supposed to, and being rather depressed that I’d missed a couple of hours of the day. It took me all of half an hour to suddenly realised that it’s Sunday and there isn’t an alarm today.

It’s a good job that I hadn’t left my bed. 10:15 is a much more realistic time to leave my bed on a Sunday.

First task today after the medication was to listen to the dictaphone. Tons of stuff on there from yesterday which I’ve now put on line, and then details of last night’s little outings.

We started off doing something about ballet. There was a girl who was a ballerina and I had boughtsome point shoes for her. It was her birthday as well and I’d spent ages working on a card for her and one or two other names on there of people who had wished her a happy birthday but most of the work in there was mine. There was some kind of gangland boss who had something of an interest in her too but only a mere passing but she dashed off to see him with this card. He interrogated her about “who’d done this” and “who’d done that” and “who’d done something else”? From her her of course it was always me. I had the impression that any moment now my number would be up at this rate.

A little later I was doing something in a junk shop. I’d gone into a junk shop and it really was a junk shop with all kinds of stuff piled everywhere. It was impossible to know where to even begin to look for anything. I’d been talking to someone a bit earlier who said that he was going to be looking for a part-time job. There was even a tie swinging over a rail with a hand-written notice on it “looking for work” and his phone number on it. These guys were in here trying to do something and they had to go out. As they went out, the radio suddenly came on with 1 of these really atmospheric stations from miles away playing music. I thought “I’d better leave this. I don’t want to become involved in this” so I went out as well and closed the door behind me. But then I was thinking on “what an absolutely vile apartment this would be. How would I possibly manage to have lived in a place like this when I was a kid, a young adult”? Which was what I had done, I lived in some dreadful places. I look back now and think “I would never ever have done that”. While I was thinking about this I was back in Winsford in my house there and they were building an extension to the housing estate, or there were some plans to, and I was waiting eagerly for the site to be unveiled so that I could go along and reserve a new plot and get myself a better house. I thought “God, how my standards have changed”!

Sometime later I was with Marianne in the USA and we were with a group of people. It was to do with speaking another language and I can’t remember if it was to do with French or Spanish. Most of the people who were there were people who had been on there before – there were only 2 of us who hadn’t. I asked “are we going to be visiting Mexico on this trip”? She replied “the situation in Mexico is extremely difficult. We’ll be only going there if so-and-so (this other new guy) wants to go”. I said “how come I haven’t been asked? I’m a new guy as well. I’ve not been to Mexico and i’d really like to go”. I noticed that where Marianne was standing were these 2 enormous tortoises that were loitering around and they were about to walk over her feet.

Next thing was to check on my sourdough fruit bread. It hadn’t risen very much at all yet again, but I gave it a second
kneading, shaped it and put it in its mould for its second proofing. And for the rst of the morning I didn’t do very much at all.

After my lunchtime porridge and finding that I had run out of pizza dough, I had a major washing-up and cleaning session in the kitchen and made another batch of dough.

later on I went out for my afternoon walk.

First thing that I did of course was to go to the end of the car park and look down over the wall onto the beach.

There were a few people down there this afternoon, not as many as there might have been yesterday and that’s no surprise because the weather has changed dramatically today. The heatwave that we had yesterday has gone and the temperature has dropped.

Not only that, the really strong wind has come back again and I was having to hang onto my cap. It’s probably strong enough to have blown everyone back indoors and that will account for the lack of people.

But isn’t it a surprise that the weather has changed for the worse now that I’ve come back home?

And then we were back at the zodiac again.

While it was doing its stuff out there in the English Channel I’d taken a few photos of it, and went to enlarge them when I returned home. And this one particularly caught my eye. It looks as if the little inflatable boat has risen up out of the sea, and there’s a frogman in attendance.

It would seem to have all of the hallmarks of some kind of maritime rescue exercise, but I might be able to find out more by looking at the local press tomorrow morning.

So leaving that for another time I walked off along the path at the top of the cliffs while the zodiac and its entourage disappeared back out to sea.

On the other side of the headland there was yet more activity going on out at sea, this time in the Baie de Mont St Michel.

Someone was having a nice afternoon out in a little yacht, cruising up and down of the Plage d’Hacqueville between Granville and St Pair sur Mer. And you do have to admit that this was the right kind of the weather for it.

There are quite a few people out over there on the beach too. More than there are across here. It’s probably something to do with the fact that the bay over there is probably more in the shelter of the wind than it is over here.

And I have some planning to do about yachting next time I’m out and about, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

Over here at the end of the headland there are quite a few signs of life. More than there have been on the footpath on top of the cliffs from where I’ve just come, because I can’t have encountered more than half a dozen people on my walk so far.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that fishing is quite a popular pastime carried on by the local inhabitants. Whether it’s from a fishing boat, on the beach at the very low tide, or from the rocks with rod and line. And it’s that latter that’s being practised today, although, once more, I have yet to see anyone actually catch anything.

And the couple sitting on the bench down at the end of the headland by the watchman’s cabin – I wonder how long they will be sitting there and whether they will have more luck than me in watching someone pull a fish out of the sea.

The chantier navale is one of the most important sights that we visit during our post-prandial perambulations around the headland, and I was keen to see what was going on down there.

However, despite my absence over the past three or four days, there have been no changes in the occupants down there. Anakena and Aztec Lady are still in there, but that’s about it. No-one new has come along to join them while I was away.

But look at the crowds of people and vehicles around Aztec Lady this afternoon. Even though it’s a Sunday and therefore a Day of Rest, they are still hard at it down there like there is no tomorrow.

There are a few people working on Anakena too, although not quite at the same rhythm.

and there have been a lot of goings-on in the outer tidal harbour over the last few days while I was away.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that over the past few weeks they have been doing some preparatory work on installing new mooring chains there and just before we came away, we saw them starting to fit them in place.

But now, we have some small boats actually tied up to them, and so that would seem to indicate that the work is finally finished. But they don’t seem to have done too much for the amount of time and money that they have spent.

You can just about make out the little white buoys that bob up to the surface when the tide is in. They mark the position of the chains and give the boatman some kind of indication where to fish around with his boathook when he needs to tie up to them.

Back here I had a coffee and then gave the pizza dough its second kneading.

Then I prepared a large apple crumble. I do have to say that thats my favourite dessert and it should be even better today because I give the crumble mix a really good mixing, and added some fresh ginger to the apple to give it a certain little extra.

When the sourdough and the crumble went into the oven I divided the pizza dough into 3, put two portions in the freezer and the third one I rolled out and put into the pizza tray. And when it had been in there for 45 minutes I assembled it.

When the sourdough and the crumble were cooked the pizza went into the oven. And here are all of the finished products – the sourdough fruit bread which has for once risen impressively, the apple crumble and the pizza.

The pizza was delicious which is always good news, and I’ll tell you about the sourdough and the crumble tomorrow night because I wasn’t hungry after my pizza.

In something of a desultory fashion during a few pauses I’ve been editing photos again from August 2019. Not very many, but nevertheless I’m now on my way from Fort Reno down to Fort Fetterman. Normal service is slowly being resumed and I’ll get back up to speed tomorrow, I hope

But that’s tomorrow. Right now I’m off to bed as I reckon that I’ve done enough for today. I’ll start off with radioing of course and I’ll see where I get to after that.

Saturday 3rd April 2021 – HAVING HAD …

… a rather late night last night, I’ve had rather a hard day today.

Despite all of that I was still able to stagger to my feet at the first alarm and take my medication. And then after that I dashed off another batch of photos from August 2019 and my trip around North-Eastern USA.

By the time I finished I was crossing over the Powder River and approaching the border between Montana and Wyoming on my way to Fort Phil Kearny, the scene of probably the greatest defeat of US forces prior to the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

A shower followed that and I set the washing machine off on a cycle (pretty clever, my washing machine) and I set off for the shops with Caliburn. And as I slammed the door the rattle and tinkle inside told me that the handle mechanism has disintegrated.

Now I’m having to scramble out of the passenger door until I can take the interior padding off the door and find out what’s happened.

But never mind that at the moment – let’s admire what I found parked up outside NOZ this morning.

It’s been quite a while a while since we’ve featured an old car on these pages, so here’s one to be going on with for now. It’s an Alpine Renault and by the look of the rear spoiler it’s an A310 fitted with the 2664 cc V6 PRV engine. The alloy wheels would date it from the late 70s.

The earlier models were fitted with the old Renault 1605 cc or 1647cc 4-cylinder in-line engine but it was woefully underpowered. The new engines made them go like stink but they had a great deal of trouble keeping the back end on the road – hence the rear spoiler.

It was France’s answer to the baby Lotuses and German Porsche 911s but never really caught on. Its rather unusual rear engine and front wheel drive didn’t endear it to the public.

All in all there were about 9,000 examples of the V6 model sold, most of them sold in France. And the small numbers of sales and 40 years since the last one was manufactured make it quite surprising to actually see one still on the road in a place like this.

Now that I’ve taken my photos of the car I went off into NOZ to do my shopping. And it was rather a disappointment in there because there was nothing of any interest in there. All I came away with was a couple of cartons of that smoothie stuff. No Banana this time, just strawberry, but that’s nice too.

Having parked up in LeClerc I went across the road to Intersport where I bought another roll-up rain jacket like the one that I lost somewhere in Canada (a different one and a different place to the one that I left in a Hotel in Calgary).

Now that the weather is warming up I won’t be wearing my winter coat to Leuven. But I’ll still need something light, comfortable and durable to roll up in the backpack in case it rains.

Leclerc came up with nothing whatever of any interest so I bought the minimum that I need and then I drove on home.

But talking of driving, with France going in to a tighter lockdown tonight, the roads into Granville were in gridlock with Parisians fleeing to the coast to escape the lockdown, bringing the virus with them and infecting all of us. Going to the shops was difficult – going home was a nightmare.

Armed with my hot chocolate and slice of sourdough fruit-bread, I came back in here and ended up having a lengthy chat with Liz on the internet.

After lunch I sat down to start on the arrears of my Central European trip but unfortunately crashed out completely and definitely for a good hour or an hour and a half. This meant a rather late walk around the headland.

Looking down over the wall at the end of the car park down onto the beach, I was rather surprised to see a group of people running out of the sea.

Whilst I hadn’t actually seen them in the water I had no doubt whatsoever that they had been in there. And even if I hadn’t been as nesh as I am you wouldn’t have caught me being in the water today. Despite the sun, there was a howling gale blowing and it was freezing. I was dressed for an Arctic winter and I was still cold.

Despite the cold, there were hordes of people prowling around outside. Most of them tourists, I imagine, come over here from other parts of France. The car park for mobile homes was absolutely full and there were vehicles turning up and turning away, disappointed.

While I was walking along the path on top of the cliffs, I was overflown by an aeroplane flying in the other direction towards the airport at Donville les Bains.

This aeroplane is F-GBAI, another one of the Robin DR 400s of which we have seen plenty around here. This one is a model 108 Dauphin 80, construction number 1289 and is owned by the Aero Club de Granville. She took off from Granville at 11:11 this morning for an unknown destination.

She took off again from Avranches Le Val Saint-Pere Airport at 16:09 and landed back at Granville Airport at 16:25. That flight corresponds with the time that I saw her.

There was nothing at all going on out at sea that I could see. Not one single boat, so I headed off across the lawn and the car park.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that yesterday we saw the reinforcing in the concrete on the roof of one of the old bunkers here at the Pointe du Roc.

This is the actual bunker concerned. Unfortunately the entrance has all been filled in so it’s not possible to go inside it. But I was interested to see the round aperture just to the left of centre in this photo. It’s actually, would you believe, a periscope so that the people in there could have a good look around without exposing themselves to enemy fire.

And I was right about the tourists. Just looking at the number plates on the cars I could see reference to départements from all over France. It seems that so very few people here care whether they spread the virus around or not and that’s a real disappointment.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, I would have had the army out patrolling the roads and preventing so much movement a long time before this.

With nothing at all going on out at sea I walked around the path on the other side to see what was going on in the port.

Over at the ferry port we have not only Chausiais but one of the Joly France boats that provides the ferry service out to the Ile de Chausey.

It’s no real surprise to see them over there at the terminal today. With all of the tourists appearing in the town today I would imagine that there are many who will be travelling out to the island today, some of whom will be staying for quite a while.

That would mean that not only will there be plenty of passengers wanting to travel out there as soon as time permits, there will be a lot of freight, like food for example, going out there too and for that they’ll need the services of Chausiais to ship it all out there.

But what doesn’t seem to be going out today are the fishing boats.

There are so many in the inner harbour that they are even having to tie themselves up in the loading bay underneath the crane. It’s a surprise because despite the wind the sea isn’t all that rough and it’s a bright sunny day, just the right kind of day to be out there hauling in the nets or the dredges.

It’s even more of a surprise too when we hear that the temporary agreement made a few weeks ago between the fishermen of Normandy, Brittany and the Channel Islands has been renewed for another short while, and also when there are so many tourists in the town who might be interested in trying some of the local produce.

Having seen or there was to see outside I came back in for my hot coffee and to carry on with my work until it was time to knock off for tea. Taco rolls with the rest of the stuffing from Thursday and followed by the last of the apple crumble with the remains of yesterday’s custard. Thoroughly delicious.

Bedtime now, and a nice lie-in because it’s Sunday. And with it being Easter, more hot cross buns for breakfast. I’m looking forward to that, I can tell you. And then I’m having a baking day, seeing as I’ve run out of pizza dough. I need to sort that out.

Thursday 1st April 2021 – THERE’S A TIME …

… for fishing, and a time for mending the nets, as we are so often told.

It beats me what these guys have been doing but they have a net stretched out here in a V shape, all rolled up as if they are about to fold it back up. There’s quite a crowd of people around them watching, and also a pile of other nets in the big plastic boxes there.

Of course, with it being a big, busy fishing port, this is the kind of thing that you expect – fishing nets and other fishing accessories all over the place. And it’s a surprise to me that they can keep the place so tidy. Maybe I should ask a few fishermen to come round and help me tidy up this place as it’s rather a mess right now.

Another thing that’s important in this port is the presence of charter yachts and also the chantier navale to keep everything in proper order.

Over the past few months we’ve been keeping an eye on what’s been going on in there and this morning on my way back to the shops I could see that there’s a new occupier in the blocks where Spirit of Conrad was laid up for a while.

That boat that’s there today is Anakena, the boat that’s been parked up for a year in the inner harbour.

But talking about this morning, I almost missed the first alarm this morning I don’t know why but I almost ended up going back to bed again. Nevertheless I pulled myself together and scrambled out of bed.

After the medication I came back in here and had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night.

There was a group of us playing after some kind of meeting. While we were playing we’d heard that a famous folk performer had died. I was waiting at the side of the stage waiting to go on to interrupt their act and announce the news to everyone but one of the musicians came over to me and asked me what I was doing. I explained and he replied “you’ll have to wait until 18:30 to say that. We’re booked until 18:30”. I replied “that’s OK as long as you announce it”. “I’m not announcing anything. You’ll have to wait until 18:30”. Later on as they were going off stage he came over to me and started to be a bit aggressive. I just grabbed him by the hands and waltzed around with him for a bit. It didn’t seem to have the desired effect to calm him down or anything like that. I thought to myself that there’s absolutely no reason why there should be this ungracious behaviour – none at all.

Having done that I had a go at the photos from August 2019 and another pile of those bit the dust. I’m now just coming up to the border between South Dakota and Wyoming on my way to the battlegrounds of the Powder River Country.

A shower was next on the agenda and then I headed out for town.

My route took me down the steps by the Rampe du Monte à Regret where they are repairing the walls.

This is the first time that I’ve taken a photo from this position. As you can see, they have put up a banner to announce that this is a school of masonry.

There were a couple of students on there working. One of them was wetting the wall and the joints by pouring water over them from a container. I explained that the best way to do it is with a big, thick paintbrush. That always worked for me when I was doing THE POINTING ON MY HOUS back all those years ago.

First stop was the Post Office. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, Rosemary accompanied me on the first part of my journey across the Atlantic and left when we reached Kangerlussuak. When I’d seen her last summer I’d given her the photos that I’d edited up to date but there were still a couple of thousand that I’ve done since.

The other day I burnt them onto a DVD and this morning I packed in into an envelope and posted it off to her. She should receive it in a couple of days and I hope that she likes it.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve been seeing all of the weird graffiti that’s been appearing around the town over the last few months.

On the way from the Post Office to the shops I passed by the Select Cinema which is of course closed for the Duration. And on the windows is pasted more of the graffiti that we’ve been seeing around the town. One could actually say that the graffiti artist has gone to town with his work.

At LIDL I spent more than usual, because I’d run out of fruit. And there were also a few extra things – like some pots of grow-your-own herbs. The had quite a few varieties so I bought some Aneth and some Basil. I would have bought some coriander as well but they had run out.

Here’s hoping that they have some more next week.

On the way home I called at the Salle Herel and the vaccination centre, which was now open for business. I asked about having my second vaccine there instead of having to drive all the way to Valognes. In principle I could but they had no vacancy until 26th April and that would be too late, according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

It’s important that I respect the manufacturer’s instructions because when the borders start to reopen, some countries, Canada for example, will only accept people who have been vaccinated according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Anyone else won’t be admitted.

Back in the apartment I made some hot chocolate and cut myself a slice of sourdough and then came into the office to do some work but unfortunately I crashed out yet again. It was 14:10 when I hauled myself out of my chair to go and have lunch. This is getting rather depressing.

After lunch I made a start on the page that I’m working on from my trip around Central Europe. I wrote the text for a few more photos but at this rate it’s going to be another month or so before I finish it. No chance of doing it by Friday as I wanted.

There was the break for me to go out for my afternoon walk. On time as well for a change.

First port of call when I went out was to go to the wall at the end of the car park and look over to see if there was anything going on on the beach.

There were some people walking about, paddling in the sea but they were of little interest today. I had more interest in the group of kids playing rounders or whatever. That seems to be a strange thing to do – not the playing of the game but the fact that they were doing it on the beach when there are facilities at the Gymnase Jean Galfione where they can play games to their hearts’ content.

From the car park I wandered off down the path along the top of the cliffs. There were quite a few people out there this afternoon which was no surprise because it was really warm today. I’d even opened one of the windows in the apartment.

At the end of the path and on the lawn I came across the Monument to the Resistance.

There’s a noticeboard there to remind us of a group of about 20 local soldiers of the Resistance who sailed to the Channel Islands on various trawlers as the Germans swarmed into the area in June 1940. They fought for the Free French in Africa, the Middle East and Italy. Several of them lost their lives.

The path across the lawn too k me across the car park and down to the headland. There was nothing going on there or out at sea. I can’t think of where the fishing boats might be. Instead, I continued along the path down the south side.

Down the footpath I came to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour where we were treated to another unusual sight.

Well, it might have been unusual a few months ago but just recently we have been seeing rather a lot of fishing boats tied up in the outer tidal harbour and left to settle on the silt when the tide goes out. And here’s another one – and it’s one of the bigger fishing boats too.

It’s a catamaran hull so it’ll settle down comfortably without careening to one side. It’s what they call “NAABSA”, or Not Always Afloat But Safely Aground

It’s quite a surprise to see one of these moored up in the dry, and you can understand where the phrase “high and dry” comes from when you see something like this.

These men down here in the harbour caught my eye as well.

Over the last couple of days we’ve seen the diggers in there digging the holes and laying the concrete slab s for the new mooring chains. The diggers weren’t actually out there on the silt this afternoon so I reckoned that they must have run out of work for the moment.

That would mean that the guys here today are surveying the harbour to work out the siting of the next row of mooring cables. if you look to the right-hand side of the photo you’ll see a marker of some description that they seem to have left in the silt. Presumable that’s where one of the concrete blocks will go for the next row of mooring chains.

A little earlier, you will have seen a photo of the chantier Navale with the new arrival, Anakena up on the blocks there.

From my little viewpoint overlooking the harbour I can see down into the chantier navale and we can have a better view of the proceedings.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that there’s a little story behind the Anakena. She came into port on her way to Scandinavia a year ago but was caught up when those countries closed up their borders to foreigners. The boat was stranded here with its family owners aboard and for the first few months at least the children were studying remotely via the internet.

Since then I’ve not seen any news of them and I’ve no idea what has become of them since then. But it looks as if they are preparing to move on elsewhere.

Just now I mentioned that the diggers weren’t out there in the harbour this afternoon.

Both of them are over there on the concrete by the fish processing plant. One of them is having a friendly chat with the tractor that pulls the trailer that one of the fishing boats uses, but the second one is behind them on a low loader trainer. Does this mean that their work is over and that they are heading home?

Talking of heading home, I was going that way too. There wasn’t anything else going on out there.

Back here I made myself a coffee, watered the herbs that I’d bought earlier, and then came in here to carry on with the work that I’d been doing.

At 18:00 I knocked off and had a session on the guitar and then went for tea. Tonight it was stuffed peppers (I’d bought some peppers today) with rice, followed by apple crumble and the last of the soya stuff. Tomorrow I’ll be making some custard.

It’s bed time now and seeing as it’s a Bank Holiday tomorrow there is no alarm. and that suits me fine. I’m ready for a good break for a few days without an alarm. A couple of good lie-ins will do me some good.

Tuesday 30th March 2021 – HAVING HAD A …

… really bad night last night, caused n the main by only having 5.5 hours of sleep, I’ve had a rather bad day today.

So bad in fact that most of the afternoon had been spent sleeping on the chair in the office. In fact there were times when I could quite easily have crawled back into bed and gone to sleep. and it probably would have been more productive had I have done so too.

But I can’t complain altogether because despite everything, today has been reasonably productive even if I didn’t spend the morning revising my Welsh (school is out for Easter by the way) as I had intended.

In news that will come as totally earth-shattering to most people, I’ve finally finished the photos for July 2019. And furthermore, I’ve burnt a DVD with those on it that I hadn’t burnt previously. This will be sent to Rosemary who, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, accompanied me from Aberdeen to Kangerlussuak.

As well as that I’ve finished another page of my voyage around Central Europe and THAT’S NOW ON LINE.

There’s just one more page to do but unfortunately that’s the page where I ran aground months ago. So don’t expect that to resurface any time soon.

In the middle of all of this I had to break off this morning to go into town. I’ve run out of fruit so I need some to keep me going until Thursday.

Off I set down the street towards town and I was arrested by the sight of the lifeboat going out and about for a run around.

They probably haven’t been out for a rescue but it does go out quite often for training exercises and the like and that’s probably what it’s been doing this morning.

There was plenty of other activity going on there at the Fish Processing Plant. Amongst the boats unloading there is our old friend la Grande Ancre who has probably been out collecting shellfish.

And there are plenty of vans parked around there too, presumably to take away the catch from the fishing boats. Whilst the Fish Processing Plant handles a lot of the catch, some of the boats belong to private enterprises such as wet fish shops or restaurants and they have their own vans to take away their shellfish.

Having watched them for a while I skipped off down the street towards town.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the pointing that’s been going on on the wall on the Rampe du Monte à Regret next to the Rue des Juifs.

Having stalled for a few weeks, this project to have apprentices training on the wall seems to have led to something of a spurt and they have advanced quite considerably. Maybe they might even finish it some time soon and start on something else.

Down the steps I went and landed in the Place Pleville and then strode out to the Super U. With the bag that I had in my sac banane I carried away a couple of apples, a couple of pears and a couple of bananas.

It was a shame that the battery in the camera went flat at this point as I would have taken a few more photos while I was out.

Next stop was the Nautical Centre on the seafront. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a few weeks ago I mentioned something about going on a sailing course and that’s the place to be. They were another one of these places where they know nothing but tell you “look on our website”. But at least they have courses and that’s always a start.

Next door to the CRNG is the Salle Hérel. That’s where the new vaccination centre is so I stuck my head inside to talk to someone. There was someone there so I started to tell my story but he cut me short. “I’m just the technician” he said. “If it’s a medical enquiry you need to come back tomorrow when the centre opens”.

So that’s something else that I need to do on Thursday morning on my way back from the shops. If I can have my second vaccination here instead of going all the way to Valognes, so much the better.

Back at the flat I carried on with work until lunchtime.

After lunch I came back in here to carry on work but I didn’t do a thing. I was curled up on the chair in here for most of the time.

When I awoke I was rather late for my afternoon walk so I grabbed the NIKON D500 and headed off out.

When I reached the wall on the end of the car park I looked down onto the beach to see what was going on down there.

It goes without saying that I had to admire those people down there on the beach. Not just those paddling around up to their knees but the people who were even deeper in looking as if they were about to launch themselves off swimming in the water. They are braver men than I am, Gungha Din.

Mind you, one can hardly blame them. The sun was out, there wasn’t much wind at all and according to my thermometer at my apartment it was 22°C. Not the kind of weather in which I would want to be seen in the sea but I could understand others wanting to have a go.

It wasn’t just on the beach that there were people around.

Right out at sea by one of the lights on a rock off the Ile de Chausey is one of the trawlers heading off into the English Channel to make its catch. As we saw this morning, they are very busy at the Fish Processing Plant wit all of the boats coming in with their catches.

Having looked around at what was going on I headed off towards the end of the headland, weaving my way through the throngs of people who were out there enjoying the weather this afternoon.

Across the lawn and the car park I went, to see what was happening out at sea. But there was nothing whatever happening out there so I continued on my way along the path on the other side if the headland.

You can tell that we are at the time of the Grande Marée. Just look at all of those cars parked on the harbour wall right now.

That is presumably where many of the people will be waiting for the “all clear” to go out onto the beach to scavenge for shellfish.

As regular readers of this rubbish will recall because I’ve mentioned it before … “on many occasions” – ed … the foreshore is let out to commercial enterprises but at the very low tides of the Grande Marée the shore is uncovered beyond the commercially-let areas and the public has access to those areas.

They can scratch away to their hearts’ content subject to the rules and regulations about quantity and size

Also scratching away to their hearts’ content down in the harbour are the two diggers that are laying the new mooring chains. They seem to be having a whale of a time.

But it beats my why they are doing this now. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year or two ago they had whole performance down there working on the mooring chains, digging them out of the silt and refurbishing them. So I wonder why they didn’t do this work then rather than making everyone come back now to do it again.

It seems to be typical of the authorities around here that they don’t have a complete programme of work. They drained the inner port a few years ago to replace the harbour gates, and then came back 6 months later to install the new pontoons. They could have done it at half the cost and in half of the time had they done it when the harbour was empty.

Then there was the notice board giving details of the Pointe du Roc. They dug up the grass and installed a path to there. And then 6 months later they installed the monument to the Resistance and dug up the path that they had laid to the noticeboard and replaced it with a path to the Resistance Monument.

They don’t seem to have the aptitude to be able to think things right through

There’s yet more activity at the chantier navale today.

While Hermes I, Lys Noir and Aztec Lady are still on their stocks down there, Spirit of Conrad now seems to have cleared off back into the water after her little sojourn in the chantier navale, all fully repaired and ready for the coming season, if we are actually going to have a tourist season this year.

Hermes I looks quite nice today, all masked off with brown paper. if the weather holds I could see that she’s going to be sprayed with a new coat of paint in certain places. She’ll be as good as new, if not better, by the time she goes back into the water.

And having seen that, and having noticed that there was nothing else going on anywhere else, I cleared off back to my apartment. I have plenty of things that I need to be doing this afternoon.

One of the things that I needed to do was to make another batch of kefir.

Plenty of juice oranges around here so I whizzed up 4 of them to extract the juice which I sieved, and then added the brewing kefir that I had made last time. I’d left an inch or so of the mother solution to use as a starter and then added the sugar lemon and fig and then filled it up with another couple of pints of water.

By now the kefir in the big jug had mixed in quite nicely with the orange juice so I stirred it all around and poured it through my filter stack into the bottles.

So here’s the finished product, all nice and orange. That will keep for a few days until I’m ready to use it.

And you’ll notice that I’m using the two bottles in which I had bought the lemonade the other week. We can see how they get on under the pressure of the fermentation. And if they hold out well enough, I’ll know what to buy the next time that they have a special offer.

As I was settling down afterwards to carry on work, Rosemary rang me up. And we had another one of our marathon chats – a mere 2 hours and 24 minutes. I’m amazed that I have so much to talk about.

That meant that I missed my guitar practice and a few other things besides. But at least with the ‘phone and the headset etc, I could wander around and do other stuff while I was talking.

Tea tonight was some vegan nuggets that I had bought in Leuven and hadn’t eaten. They were a couple of months past their sell-by date so I’ll be having the rest tomorrow. They were actually quite delicious with veg and potatoes and the apple crumble that followed it all down was just as delicious. I am eating well these days.

Having written my notes, I’m now ready for bed. I’m exhausted and ready for a really good sleep and it’s high time that I had one as well.

Sunday 28th March 2021 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

… the photos of the crowds of people out and about in thr glorious sunshine this afternoon, I can tell you about my rather quiet day today.

It started off as we mean to go on with me not rising from my stinking pit until 11:05 according to my fitbit, only to find out that it was in fact 12:05 because the clocks had altered this morning.

After breakfast I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night, because despite the fact that I’d taken that pill before I went to bed, I’d been out and about during the night and there were some notes about it on the dictaphone that needed to be transcribed.

I’d been to buy a motor bike at Webster’s at Crewe. They told me to come back on Friday and they would have a Honda 50 for me. I went back on Friday evening and as I walked into the shop the guy was selling it to someone else. I was really annoyed by that and I made my annoyance known. He said “don’t you worry. We have something ideal for you”. He took me into the back and there was this ancient Suzuki 250 painted red. I thought “this is a scrambler type of configuration, not very comfortable and I didn’t fancy that. There was another 50cc scooter but it was the type that was renowned for being uncomfortable and I didn’t want that either”. He said “we have a Ford Transit like your old one. It needs some work doing to it, the wheel bearings and a few things”. I took it home and noticed that a few of the exhaust parts were in the back of it. I did the rear wheel bearings and went to assemble the exhaust but found that it was bits of a VW exhaust and didn’t fit at all. That’s why half of it was in the back. I was pretty annoyed and ended up taking it back to the garage. I was going to tell them what I thought of them. There was much more to this dream than this but I can’t remember.

Later on a plane took off from somewhere and the radio was stuttering. It didn’t gain height and all of a sudden it crashed right in front of the sentry box where I was on duty. I summoned help and ran over to this ‘plane to see what had happened. I don’t remember any more of this except that I ended up in a load of trouble. For some reason my superior officer was very unhappy with me and bawled me out for something but I can’t remember what it was. I did notice that in the report that I’d submitted, the second sentence started with 2 capital letters instead of the usual 1. But I can’t remember very much of this at all.

First task today, despite it being Sunday and a Day of Rest, was to synchronise the big computer with the one that I took with me to Leuven. I’d done some work on various files while I was away so they needed to be copied back and to over-write the ones on the big computer.

Of course, if I were to have my files stored on a cloud, there wouldn’t be any need to do that. But I don’t want my files stored anywhere where I couldn’t access them regularly or, more importantly, where other people can access them.

Having done that I made a start on the baking activity.

First task was to make one of my sourdough bread things. I’m not very good with the sourdough as regular readers of this rubbish will recall and it doesn’t rise as much as it should. But adding to it a banana, some ground brazil nuts and a pile of dried and desiccated fruit, it makes a kind of soggy moist fruit cake, a slice of which makes a really delicious and nutritious breakfast with my hot chocolate.

Having set that off I turned my attention to the normal bread. A pile of wholemeal flour, water, salt, yeast, sugar and water and as well as that, several handfuls of sunflower seeds. The yeast and sugar added to the warm water and left to fester, and once it has begun to ferment I could add it to the flour and salt, and mix it all in.

While I was doing that I was talking to Liz on the internet and feeding the sourdough and the ginger while I was at it.

When it was all sitting there festering I went out side for my afternoon walk.

There were crowds and crowds of people wandering around outside this afternoon, including these people here who are playing petanque.

And this is what annoys me intensely because as you can see, not one of these people is wearing a face mask. Never having seen these people before, it’s my betting that they are tourists and if they have come from a Covid-infested area they could be spreading the virus around amongst everyone around here, despite everything that we are trying to do around here to keep the area virus-free.

It beats me, what these people do not understand about the virus and how it spreads after all of this time that we have been suffering. It’s people like this that are responsible to the raging epidemic that is going on at the moment and they should be brought to account.

Crowds of people surging around everywhere this afternoon, as you can see over there in this photo.

That is the footpath underneath the walls, along which I used to run in the evenings when we were allowed out at night. But I wouldn’t show myself up by running along there in broad daylight with all of those people around. I have my pride.

But returning to our moutons as they say around here, you can see where the medieval walls are fenced off from the public because of their crumbling state. I have seen in the Council’s budget a reference to the repair of part of the walls and I hope that this part is to be included. It’s been fenced off since before I came to Granville.

Here’s something that’s extremely exciting and which had happened while I was away in Leuven.

As usual, my route took me along the footpath on top of the headland and down to the lawn near the lighthouse and semaphore post, and on the lawn I stumbled across this.

It seems that a mysterious hole has appeared in the lawn. It’s about 20 cms in diameter and goes down to quite a depth. It seems unlikely to be any kind of natural formation so it’s possible that we are going to be seeing some kind of human activity around here in early course.

That’s something for me to keep at the back of my mind for the future.

While I was observing the hole in the ground, I was overflown by another light aeroplane. It was even quite busy in the air today.

This aeroplane is a Robin DR-400, serial number 1931, registration number F-GIKI and it’s owned by the Granville Aero Club. It’s one of their machines that is used for teaching flying and also teaching navigation, and hasn’t that given me an idea?

As for where it’s going, I can’t say because it hasn’t filed a flight plan and by the time that I returned to my apartment it must have landed because it wasn’t shown on the flight radar.

From there I walked across the car park and down to the headland where I saw the yacht with the wind turbine at the stern whose photo you saw earlier. And then I wandered off along the path on top of the headland overlooking the port.

It goes without saying that I was interested in what was going on down in the chantier navale.

From the viewpoint there I could see down into the yard and I noticed that there was no change in occupancy there. We have Spirit of Conrad, Hermes I, Lys Noir, Freddy Land and Aztec Lady but that’s about it. No-one left and no-one else came while I was away in Leuven.

There’s no-one down there working on them so they can’t be in a dreadful rush to leave here and go back into the water. Not that they could go back into the water right now because as you can see, the tide is right out just now.

And there’s nothing going on at the ferry port either. On the way down to the station I’d noticed that there was an excursion to the Ile de Chausey advertised for today so probably both of the Joly France boats are out there with their passengers.

There seems to be plenty of activity down at the loading bay in the inner harbour. Chausiais is moored up there underneath the loading crane.

The boat behind it is interesting too. It’s shrink-wrapped so it’s possibly a new boat, and it’s looking as if it’s waiting there for a lift to other parts. We’ll have to see who comes along to pick her up.

From the harbour I went on home and partook of what was left of my orange ginger beer – no coffee today because it’s quite warm outside. And it was delicious too. Despite its volatile nature and explosive capability, I’ll make some more – but this time I’ll try some stronger bottles rather than the IKEA ones that couldn’t last the pace.

Back here I carried on with my cooking.

First thing to do was to prepare an apple crumble. Because I have only a small oven I made it in two smaller dishes that I could stack one on top of the other.

While I was doing that I’d switched on the oven and when the crumble was ready I bunged that and the bread in there.

Next was to roll out the pizza pastry that I’d taken out of the freezer first thing. And having greased the pizza tray I put the pizza base in and folded the overhanging edges back into the tray. Then I left to fester for an hour.

Later on I assembled the pizza and when the bread and crumble were cooked I took them out and put the pizza in.

During the various pauses I’ve been working on the photos from July 2019. Another pile has bitten the dust and there are just 38 left for that month. I’m now approaching Wounded Knee in South Dakota.

Here are the finished products. Don’t they look delicious?

The pizza tasted really delicious and it would have been even better had I remembered to turn up the oven again after I’d removed the bread. I’ve no idea what the crumble is like because being full after my pizza, I didn’t have a dessert.

Now that I’ve written my notes I’m off to bed. There’s a radio programme that needs doing tomorrow and that’s the first thing to be done. But there’s also the sourdough to be baked so that it’s ready for my mid-morning break and so I’ll have to put that into the oven as soon as I wake up.

Here’s hoping that I have a good cramp-free sleep.

Thursday 18th February 2021 – THAT WAS A …

… really nice tea tonight. And I’ve no idea why either.

For a start, it was the same stuffing that I’d used on Tuesday in my pepper (well, not the same, but leftovers from the same batch) lengthened with kidney beans and stuffed into tacos to make taco rolls with rice (which I remembered to put in the pan tonight). All followed by apple crumble with (because I’ve run out of coconut dessert) some soya vanilla cream dessert.

What beats me is that it’s the same stuff that I’ve had on a regular basis over the past ever so many years and yet it tasted far better tonight than it ever has done.

What else beats me is the news that I was up yet again before the third (now fourth) alarm. That’s not like me at all these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will realise. What’s even more surprising was that it was a horribly late night – or, more to the point – early morning. I was half-expecting to be still in bed right now.

So after medication I had a listen to the dictaphone to see where I’d been during the night. I’m not sure what was happening here but it was another hot, sweaty dream. There were a few of us on a bus or train and we had to go to the toilet. The conveyance came to a stop so we all had to rush to the public conveniences. We stampeded like mad to go there. It was obvious that some people who were older or more infirm than us and we overtook them. One of our party became a steward and was letting people in in accordance with how they had descended from the coach or even people sitting at these tables. We had to wait our turn. In the end we could enter a cubicle but in the one that I was in you had to use a bottle. I went to use it but a guy knocked on the door asking if he could have his bottle back. I said that I was just about to use it to which he replied “oh no, I need it back”. I said “you find me another bottle and you can have this one back no problem whatsoever”. He produced something tiny like a nail file brush container thing. I said “don’t be silly, a proper-sized bottle”. He replied “I can’t see one”, something like that. “There must be one here – there are all these toilets”. Despite the intervention from a couple of other people who were trying their best to help out, he wouldn’t supply a second bottle and insisted on trying to take his away. I wasn’t having any of this. I couldn’t move because I was sitting on the toilet by now. This became something of a stupid impasse. Each time I looked at him, there was always something more missing off his car. It was becoming a wreck and he wouldn’t be able to go there anyway but he kept on insisting for his bottle back and I kept on insisting that he find me something else to use and he offering me this little nail file brush thing and it was all becoming really stupid.

You can’t say that you aren’t being overwhelmed with excitement by some of this stuff, can you?

Later on, there we were, 3 of us, me, a young girl and a woman and we were dressed in some quite elaborate and decent clothing for the carnival, to be a police officer, constable or police observer, whatever but we had to travel in civilian clothes so you don’t know. Everyone was lined up there taking off their ex-military underwear and swapping it. This is where I joined in and we had exactly the same argument as we had before about the issue of handing over the tokens.
So what I want to know is “what have I missed off here that wasn’t recorded?”. That must have been good too.

Later on, I had a shower and a general clean-up, and I even went one better than David Crosby because while he almost cut his hair, I cut mine. It was starting to become too long for how I like it so I’ve cut it right back with a n°2. That’ll keep it out of mischief for a few weeks.

Grabbing a slice of sourdough fruitcake and a mug of hot chocolate I had my one-on-one with my Welsh teacher. It should have been for 15 minutes but we were finished long before that. I told her about my Teflon brain (nothing sticks to it) but she thinks that I’m doing pretty well. That’s surprising because I’m sure that I can do much better than I am.

Rather later than usual because of my one-on-one, I headed off for the shops.

Down at the end of the road I had a look over the wall to see what was going on down in the harbour.

Not a lot – no freighters in today so it seems. But the yachting school seems to be in full swing. You can see the little boats with their green sails out there in the bay.

And seeing them there reminds me. That’s one of the things that really needs my attention – to go down there and enquire about taking a course in yachting this Spring. It’s not actually the yachting that interests me but the whole seamanship thing. I know about port and starboard and fore and aft but that’s about it.

However I’m not the worst at this. I know that one of my female friends was most upset when a sailor shouted “avast behind” as she walked past him on the deck.

It had been raining earlier but it had dried up a little so it was quite pleasant walking around the back of the town on the way to the railway station.

When you’ve paid for your tickets on-line you are given a security code and with the code and the bank card that you used to buy your tickets, you obtain your tickets from the machine at the station. But sometimes it’s out of order and the booking office doesn’t open until 09:30 whereas the train leaves at 08:55.

For that reason I always like to go for my tickets a couple of days earlier as I pass on the way to the shops when the ticket office is open. If the machine is out of order the booking office can print them out.

LIDL was expensive today. I spent a lot of money there. But then again I’d forgotten to buy a lot of things at the weekend so I suppose it was about right, I reckon.

On the way back home I went to look at the old cafe on the corner of the Rue St Paul and the Rue Victor Hugo to see how they are getting on with the demolition.

And it’s not there now – the ground’s all flat, although I doubt if there is a man with a bowler hat beneath it. What there are though are a couple of large signs fixed to the fence telling us that planning permission has been applied for so that a block of flats might be erected on the spot. But I’d heard all about that a week or two ago.

The town was quite busy this morning as I passed through. It’s school half-term this week so the brats are at liberty running around with stressed-out grandparents in tow.

On up the hill in the Rue des Juifs I staggered with my heavy load. And I reached the park bench on the pavement at a very propitious moment.

Just as I arrived, the red light at the harbour entrance started to flash and as I watched, the gates slowly started to close. I stood and watched them for a while and I was trying to work out the pressure that the hydraulic rams must have to exert to close the gates against the pressure of water that must be upon them. It’s hardly surprising that they have to replace the gates every now and again.

Many of the trawlers are out at sea by the looks of things, but one that isn’t is our old – or maybe I ought to say “new” – friend Le Pearl moored up over there next to the harbour offices.

Where I was sitting was right by the Rampe du Monte à Regret, the path and stairway that leads down to the lower road at the Place Pelley (in case you haven’t guessed it, Granville is honeycombed with alleys, ramps and stairways due to the steepness of the cliffs around here).

This is where they have been doing the pointing of the retaining wall for the last while, so I was intrigued to see just how they were doing. And the answer is, as you can see for yourself, that they’ve made no progress whatever over the last three weeks at least.

However, I have heard an interesting little story about this wall. Apparently one of the local Employment Project things that they have around here is running a course in stone-pointing starting in March and the only place where they can have some real practical experience is just here on this wall. So I wonder if that’s why work has ground to a halt – they are going to be having the apprentices doing it as the practical part of their course.

And with all of the renovation plans that they announced for the walls the other day, I suppose that they’ll need all of the apprentices they can find.

So having recovered my breath I headed on up the hill to the viewpoint overlooking the fish processing plant.

Although the gates to the harbour are closed, there is still plenty of activity down there. Some of the trawlers must have only beaten the gates by a matter of a couple of minutes because as I watched , a couple of them jostled for position at the fish-processing plant so that they could unload their catch.

Back in the apartment it was lunchtime so I grabbed my sandwiches. I found some smoked vegan cheese with a sell-by date of January 2020 when I was cleaning out the fridge so I’ve started on that today until it’s gone.

Rosemary had rung me while I was out so I rang her back. Just a little phone call today – one hour and fifty-two minutes. I don’t know what it is that we find to talk about during all of this time.

That took me all the way up to walkies-time so I went back out to see how things were doing.

There were plenty of people around today too, especially down on the beach by the steps up to the Rue du Nord. Not as many people as the other day when there seemed to be hordes of them, but more than enough to get into a pile of mischief.

Up here on the car park there were dozens of people milling around, including a couple of brats whizzing around on scooters between the parked cars. Mind you, it was quite warm for the time of year. 9°C on the thermometer that I have and isn’t that quite a bit warmer than this time last week?

So having sorted out all of that, I headed off down the path on my way out to see what the rest of the world was up to.

Today was another one of those days where although there was a sea mist, the coast was fairly clear and you could see for miles down that way even if it was hazy out to sea.

The lighthouse at Cap Frehel was quite clearly visible with the naked eye today, long before I reached the headland and that’s always impressive considering that it’s about 70 kilometres away from here. And one of these days, when I’ve finished the photos and the web pages for my summer in Eastern Europe, I’ll do the photos from my boat trip down the coast and you can see the lighthouse for yourselves in glorious technicolour.

But don’t hold your breath. It’s going to be quite a long job.

Even from down where I was standing I could see a big dirty cloud away in the distance so I was keen to go and have a closer look to see what that was doing.

Plenty of people around on the paths and the lawns and even a broken down car with its bonnet up on the car park so it was rather a slalom course that I had to take in order to reach the end of the headland. And I do have to say that I found that cloud quite impressive to watch.

That must be a really impressive downpour going on over there in the bay, and the coastline over there seems to be taking a real pounding. Luckily the wind is in another quarter so we won’t be getting any of that, which is just as well.

The kind of weather that we were having was so much better.

It was quite cloudy and dry, with not too much wind. But we did have another hole in the sky that was letting through a rather large amount of sunshine that was lighting up the bay right in front of me. And the town of Cancale on the other side was brought out quite nicely in relief by the light.

But I can’t stay here all day. I headed on down the path on the other side but there was nothing at all of any interest in the port or in the chantier navale I came home instead for my hot coffee.

Having drunk the coffee I turned my attention to the kefir that had been brewing for the last few days.

There are still some oranges remaining that need using so it was orange kefir today, and here are three bottles of the aforementioned that I prepared today, with the new kefir mix to the side and the ginger beer from the other day to the left.

Those bottles that I bought the other day don’t look very happy though. I hope that they are reliable enough to work under the kind of pressure that my kefir reaches.

As well as all of this I’ve done a few more photos of our trip to the hot springs in Greenland and also some more work tagging and indexing the photos from Oradour. They are all completed and I’m now doing them for the Chateau de Chalus.

It’s disappointing that they aren’t ready because I was hoping too have had them finished today. But friends come first of course. And tomorrow I have bread to bake, a Course to study and probably half a dozen other things that I’ve forgotten too, so I’ve no idea when they will be finished.

Talking of friends, Terry has had the statement setting out what French Old Age Pension he’s likely to receive on the basis of his own contributions. He’s amassed enough credits for a monthly pension of €25:00. I told him that I’ll chip in my monthly Old-Age Pension from my employment in Belgium – all €30:23 per month – and the two of us can go berserk.

Spend, spend, spend, hey?

Sunday 14th February 2021 – WE’VE SEEN THE …

… last of the snow and ice for a while, I reckon.

The temperature has warmed up, the wind has risen and round about 118:00 this evening we had a torrential downpour. That will wash away the last of the snow and ice that’s been lingering around. Unless the temperature drops substantially and the rain turns into snow.

Talking of lingering … “well, one of us is” – ed … I didn’t linger around very long in bed this morning, just for a change on a Sunday. In fact by 09:30 I was up and wandering around looking for my medication. That’s not something that happens every Sunday.

Listening to the dictaphone, I could hear that I’d been on my travels during the night. I was with a friend and some kind of taxi driver person yesterday. My friend had wanted something doing and I had organised some help for him, this Pakistani person whoever it was was the right kind of person so I got the 2 people to meet. My friend and I had a very long chat about all kinds of things, the past, the future, all of that kind of thing. Then I had to go home. Round about, I dunno, it was dark in the evening. I had no socks on and I had to walk to my locker which was somewhere in Shavington in order to get them without any socks. I said goodbye to him and checked the dates for when we’d be meeting again and waved goodbye to this Pakistani guy and set off to walk. I walked back down Crewe Road towards Sugar Loaf Corner and I could hear in the distance the sounds of one of my sisters or brother being beaten for something or other for some act of misbehaviour. I could hear the kid shouting acts of defiance while this beating was going on. It seemed to far away yet seemed so near. I was the only person out there in the street just in my bare feet walking down the street. There was no-one else around at all.

First task was to book my voyages and hotel accommodation for Leuven. And luckily it seems that all of the trains are back up and running normally again. The price that they wanted from me too made it a very worthwhile occupation this morning.

Plenty of room in my little hotel too so it all worked out very well. It seems to have been a very good idea to change my day to a Thursday. The only downside is that I’m having to travel up on the Wednesday which is my birthday, so happy birthday to me, hey?

While I was there I had a little shuffle around of my money. With not going off on any holidays just now, the money that I had set aside was sitting there not doing very much.

Next task was to book an appointment with my Welsh tutor. We are all having a little one-on-one with her next week just for 15 minutes and I needed to reserve my little spec.

The rest of the morning was spent dealing with the photos from Greenland in July 2019. And one or two of them have really come out well too, like THIS ONE and THIS ONE.

After lunch I spent some time working on my Oradour sur Glane stuff. All of the notes are now finished and I’m starting to fit in the photos in the places where they ought to go. And that’s not easy either with 53 photos to go at.

At some point in the afternoon I went out for my usual afternoon walk.

At the end of the car park I looked over the wall down to the beach. There were several people down there on the beach wandering around this afternoon and, just like yesterday, I didn’t envy them one bit. The temperature has warmed up somewhat, but the wind has warmed up too and it’s blowing a gale right now.

The tide is of course way out, almost at its limit. It would be interesting to see how the sea would be behaving when the tide is right in. And I’m interested to know what those two tracks are down there on the beach.

From the car park I walked along the path at the back of the College Malraux and along the top of the cliffs.

Although it might not look like it, it wasn’t all that much later than usual. The clouds were quite dark and heavy, a promise of things to come, I reckon, with the strong westerly wind that was blowing. But there was that great big hole in the sky and with that lucky old sun having nothing to do but roll around heaven all day, the bright spot has now moved around a couple of degrees.

It’s now lighting up the Brittany coast, as much as we could see down there this afternoon with the rainstorm that’s falling down over there.

For a change, I’d taken with me the NIKON D500. I’d had a little play around with it this morning and managed to make the camera recognise the memory card that’s in it.

With having to use the NIKON 1 J5 which doesn’t have an eyepiece viewfinder, I’ve not been able to take any photos of the aeroplanes and other aircraft that have been flying overhead. And so I celebrated the occasion by taking a photo of an aeroplane that went flying by overhead at the Pointe du Roc.

Unfortunately I couldn’t quite read the serial number and there was nothing on the database having taken off from Granville airport this afternoon, so I’m not able to say exactly what it is. I shall have to do some further research.

Down at the end of the headland there wasn’t anything at all going on. Nothing out at sea and of course with the tide well out there would be no fishing boats coming home.

Down at the viewpoint overlooking the chantier navale I had a look down to see what was going on. There is no change in occupancy today – the four boats that we have seen for the last few days are still there not having done very much.

There’s no question as to why Aztec Lady and Lys Noir might be in there. With no business to attend to due to the postponement of all holiday activities, this is a good moment moment to have a full overhaul. But the big yacht has been there for months with no sign of moving.

Further on along the path I had a good look down to see what was happening in the port.

There are quite a few fishing boats there in the port this afternoon and of course our two Channel Island Ferries Granville, with Victor Hugo hiding away behind her, are still there too. No sign of them moving as long as the pandemic is still running wild, and as I’ve said before, unless Jersey puts its hands in its pockets, there’s a possibility that they might not run again.

Seeing as I was ready for my afternoon coffee, I headed home, and not running either because of the howling gale that was blowing up.

Having finished my days’ work, Next step was to prepare my food. having taken out a lump of pizza dough from the freezer earlier this morning. I kneaded it, rolled it out and put it in the pizza tray.

While it was busy proofing, I made myself a big apple crumble. That’s going to be my pudding for the next week. Lots of apple, with sultanas, desiccated coconut, cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar and lemon juice, all topped with a lovely crumble topping.

While that was busy baking, I prepared the pizza and when the crumble was baked I took it out and stuck the pizza in for the usual 30 minutes. And it was absolutely delicious, as usual. It’s becoming something of a production line thing now, these pizzas.

As for the apple crumble, I’ll have to tell you what that’s like tomorrow, because I’m rather full right now.

Having now typed out my notes, I’m going off to bed. I’m working on a radio programme tomorrow so I need to be on form. I’ve already crashed out once and I don’t want to do it again. I may as well go to bed and make a really goos start in the morning.

There’s plenty to do, as usual.

Saturday 9th January 2021 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

… another depressing, dismal, miserable day as far as my health has gone.

But more of this anon

Today has also been the first day that I’ve had to scrape the ice of Caliburn’s windscreen before I could take him out for a drive to the shops.

Overnight the temperature had dropped to -0.5°C – the first time that it’s been below freezing, and we had had a heavy frost as you can see in this photo of the grass down the side of NOZ. It’s not quite the -16°C of the Auvergne of course through which I lived for 9 years, for the first couple of years at least in the most primitive of circumstances, and there was no snow either.

But winter is here with a bang and although it’s still above freezing even as I type, this brilliant clear sky outside fills me full of misgivings. I’ve turned the heating up.

But retournons à nos moutons as they say around here, it was another horrible day for me. Once again I heard the alarms but I couldn’t get out of bed and it was just after 08:00 when I finally tore myself from underneath the covers.

And it took me quite a while to find enough energy to go and find my medication too. It was definitely one of the worst starts to the day that I’ve had.

However I did manage to have a shower too and then I wandered off to organise Caliburn so that I could go to the shops.

NOZ came up with a few odds and sods of this and that but nothing worth shouting about so I wandered down the road to LeClerc.

Excuse the extremely blurred photo but the camera has focused on some dirt on the windscreen of Caliburn instead of the car over there.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that pathetic parking features quite often in these pages, and here’s another fine example. Of course, it’s an Audi, as you might expect, and the driver has just abandoned (I won’t say “parked”) his car like that in two spaces and cleared off inside.

As for me, I had my own parking issues. With Caliburn being wider than a standard car, I always park at the end of a row and park right over so that there’s a good gap up the side. That was what I did today, so the person in the next bay parked right over on the white line which meant that it was a struggle to put my shopping into the side door.

And talking of the shopping, I bought loads of fruit and some other bits and pieces but there was nothing in the sales that caught my fancy.

Back at the apartment I put the frozen food away and then made myself a banana smoothie with plenty of ice – I really did have a fancy for that this afternoon.

And then, regrettably, I fell asleep on the chair and that was that until 14:00. Just going to the shops had totally exhausted me. And I felt totally dreadful when I awoke. I know that I’ve had some bad re-awakenings but I don’t think that I’ve ever had one quite like this.

After a rather late lunch I went for my afternoon walk – into town and the chemist’s to pick up the medication that they didn’t have on Thursday.

At the foot of the Escalier des Noires Vaches there was one of the shellfish boats unloading its catch into a fish shop van – presumably there’s some kind of connection between the two. But I didn’t stop to enquire. I pushed on along the quayside where I bumped into the itinerant and we had a little chat.

Having picked up my medication I came on back home and sat down to listen – at long last – to where I’d been during the night.

At some point during the night I ended up in Accrington, although it was nothing like the Accrington that I know, and as I’ve only ever been to Accrington twice in my life I wondered why I would suddenly find myself there on a nocturnal voyage.. I ended up in a big office building and I was looking through all the stuff that was on sale in the Oxfam shop there. There were 2 Oxfam shops and I’d gone from one to the other in these 2 big skyscraper buildings and I hadn’t found anything that I wanted. I ended up in the living room of one of these shops. There were 2 people in there so I asked them if they could tell me the way to the railway station. They said “it’s only a few minutes walk away from here, but really you aren’t supposed to be in here”. I apologised and said “just point me in the direction of where the railway station is and that will be fine”. Some other guy said “we’ll have to get someone to take you”. “Why’s that?” “Well, you aren’t qualified to do that”. I looked at this guy and could see that he’s a foreigner but I could see the first bit clearly that he was talking about the other 2 guys had hushed him up. One of them said that he would sort something out but I shouldn’t really be in that room where they are. It’s a private room.

Later on I was working in a nursing home in the UK. We’d started to organise holidays and I’d been based in Dover. I had to pick up a group of people and they were all elderly and infirm, on crutches and in wheelchairs, that kind of thing and I had to meet them at the station. when they came off the train I was staggered at my lot which wasn’t much good. I had to take them into town, so I pointed out a few things to them. After we’d set off for a couple of minutes someone made me aware that there were 3 people missing. I knew about 1 who had gone off to do her own thing but another couple had apparently gone off to visit a fort in the vicinity. That left me with 15 instead of 18. I told them about an anecdote – how I’d met a hotel keeper down here when I was travelling back and to to Europe but I didn’t have the chance to finish it as I was kept on being interrupted. Eventually I had to tell them about the area where we were and took them to a corner of a street basically. This was the street where my newsreader lived and at that moment my newsreader suddenly decided to update and started to pump out loads of information going back a couple of years. With my newsreader 99% is rubbish and you have to sift through to try to have the 1% that’s good. I thought “how am I going to explain to people that they are going to be seeing news 5 years old that we already know what has and hasn’t happened and how are they going to act when they start to get it again.

Later still I was with 1 of my regular girls but I can’t remember who it was now – something that really fills me with dismay as I’m sure you can imagine. We were talking about cars. I had my collection of vehicles, a Cortina, a couple of others and a BT estate from Italy that I had that I was quite happy showing off. It came to the question of doing them up, and I decided that I would sell everything except the one that I really liked and I’d spend all my money restoring that one. Then off we separated and a short while later she was sitting at a table with a couple of people who had kidnapped her. I walked over and said “hi”. I was breakfast time so I mouthed that I would fetch a loaf and bring it back. I brought it back to the table and these 2 guys were still sitting there. They wouldn’t take a hint about going and leave the 2 or us on our own. I cut a couple of slices off this bread and put them in the toaster but it jammed the toaster and 1 piece just wouldn’t come free and wouldn’t switch off. All smoke started to come out as if the toast was burning inside it.

But this thing about kidnapping (which thing? Have I missed something?) relates to something else that happened earlier where there was a young girl who had to be home at something like 22:30 but it got to 22:15, 22:20, 22:25 and she still hadn’t turned up. I ended up going to a night club and she was sitting on 1 of the tables there. There were a couple of people with her so I gave her a wide berth although I kept an eye on the proceedings. Round about 02:30 her mother stormed in, grabbed hold of her and they had this really intense discussion and I don’t know what happened after that, which is disappointing.

There was more stuff too, but as you are probably eating a meal right now, I’ll spare your stomachs. But it seems that the really disturbing dreams are back again. They went away for a while so I wonder what has summoned them to return.

For my evening walks I had a quick dash around my circuit – four legs of my run tonight as well.

There were a few people out there tonight but nothing else much going on at all. I took a photo of the Christmas lights in the shop in the Rue Georges Clemenceau just to prove that I was out and that I wasn’t the only one still with Cristmas lights illuminated, and then I ran back home for tea.

There was some stuffing left over from my stuffed pepper so I added a small tin of kidney beans and a mushroom and then had taco rolls with rice and veg followed by the last of the apple crumble.

So now I’ve finished my notes, I’m off to bed. A lie-in tomorrow of course and I hope that it’ll do me some good. I can’t go on like this. It’s getting on my wick.

Sunday 20th December 2020 – SHRIMP BOATS …

… are coming, there’s dancing tonight

Tonight while I was out on my run, I counted the number of fishing boats out at sea that were heading back to home, and made it at 18 as far as I could see, and there where probably even more others the that I couldn’t see too.

With Christmas rapidly approaching and with Brexit threatening to cut off access to the fishing grounds out there with the repealing of the Treaty of the Bay of Granville, anything that floats has probably gone out to sea to make the most of whatever they can catch between now and the end of the year.

As for me, I made the most of whatever sleep came my way last night. Despite not going to bed until 02:30 this morning, I slept all the way through until about 11:20, which isn’t too bad considering.

And plenty of time for me to go off on a voyage or two here and there. We were on board a ship last night steaming into a harbour – a really big harbour without many ships in there. We were imagining what it would have been like 100 years ago. We had to tie up and manoeuvre around in the port and that meant following the quayside edge very closely for quite a distance. I was thinking that 100 years ago with it full of ships we would never have done this. The cleats that you use for tying up the ship were missing – hadn’t been refitted after a paint job so we tipped out a box of them and found 3 but couldn’t find the screws then to screw them together. The screws that we had chosen out of here weren’t big enough. We didn’t have the right screws for some reason. Rosemary was there and she had to do something. I had the impression that it was to spread some jam on some bread or something but I can’t remember what it was she had to do. Then the ship pulled into port. By this time we were on the quayside and the ship pulled in and they threw out the ropes and tied her up. Down came the gang plank and we had to go back on board to get our things ready to move on. I helped on board those whom I was with.

Some time later I was on Crewe Bus Station with my mother and STRAWBERRY MOOSE waiting for a bus to Shavington. It was starting to become late and I thought to myself “I wonder where the thing has got to. It should have pulled in by now”. Mother was chatting away to people as she usually did. She talked to a bus conductor who told her that it had pulled in at the Zoom platform down there, platforms 4 5 and 6 which was where the buses usually went to. So what were we doing up at the top end of the bus station I don’t know. My mother needed some convincing and in the end she suddenly said “yes it must be” so off we ran. I had to fetch my rucksack which was extremely heavy and pick up Strawberry Moose. There was another girl there who was going to school for her first day. She was saying that it’s not going to be much fun if she turns up late for school or not even get in at all on her very first day. We ran on down to where the voice was, and I heard a voice shout “no, no, no” but I ignored it. I was just about to mount on the bus when I saw my mother up on top making “no” gestures so I had a look at the bus that I was just about to get on that he had indicated which was the K43 that goes to Nantwich via Willaston, not Shavington so I thought “what’s goign to happen now?” I had to get off again. A couple of minutes later she came back down. Then this really ancient kind of tram that was actually now a bus pulled into the bus station at Platform 1. We all went down to see it – it was “P” registered which was of course a nonsense because the thing was about 100 years old. We had a good look around it and found that it was an old Liverpool Corporation tram that Crosville had acquired and were going to use it as a bus. It turned out to be ours and we were actually going to have a ride on it as well. Someone took out his camera to photograph it so we all took out ours and stood back in a ring to take a photograph of it but for some reason my camera wasn’t working again and I just couldn’t get a pic of it. This was annoying of course because everyone else was wanting to walk down to have a closer look at it and I was asking them to wait until I had a photo which they were all willing to do but it was just taking me ages to try to take a photo. The camera just wouldn’t seem to take it

And I’m impressed that I can remember so much about the organisation of Crewe Bus Station in a dream after all these years. And it’s also strange that Crewe Bus Station always seems to put in an appearance round about this time of the year.

Later on during the night I was in Whitchurch – 2 of us had set off from Crewe or Nantwich and the guy I was with wasn’t ready so I said that I’d set off and he could catch me up. The usual way that we’d go to Shrewsbury would be via Audlem and Market Drayton but for some reason I went through Whitchurch that way. When I got into Whitchurch this guy still hadn’t caught me up and there was a huge flood in the centre of the town. By now I was on foot, and there was a Mark II Ford Zephyr taxi up to its doors in the water making really heavy weather of trying to get through. I thought that he shouldn’t have got through at all in this. A rough old thing as well with no interior trim or anything, a real ancient elderly machine. When we got past I took out my camera to take some photos but it wouldn’t work again. I ought to take loads of photos of these floods but I couldn’t get the camera to work. Then I noticed that trains were passing very slowly underneath the railway bridge so I went to see what was happening there. There was a load of workmen digging away at a pile of sand. It looked as if the bridge had collapsed onto the railway underneath in parts. I was there trying to take a photo of that but still the camera wouldn’t work. A guy came up and asked what I was doing. I explained that I was taking some photos for a blog. he replied “you’d better bring some bottles down for us. Me and my mates, we’d like some bottles” I said “I’ll talk to the readers – see what they have to say about it. They won’t even pay me for my travelling expenses”. In the end we were allowed down and I was having a look for the charge utile loading plate on the bridge. You could see where the bridge had collapsed under there – a proper Victorian construction. Again I went to take some photos but again the camera wouldn’t work. All that time I was trying to take these photos these kids kept on running around in front of me and the camera and I kept on telling them to keep away so they would keep away for a minute or two and run back again with all of this going on – the floods and the Zephyr up to its doors and the collapsed bridge and the trains inching their way past and the flaming camera wouldn’t work!

It’s not the first time that the NIKON 1 has let me down in a dream either. It seems to be becoming a regular feature in a nocturnal ramble these days, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But while I’m on the subject, seeing as it came up in the middle of a nocturnal voyage, if you’ve enjoyed or profited from these notes, please make your next Amazon purchases by using the links aside. It costs you no extra but I receive a small commission that helps defray my web-hosting expenses

All of that took me right up until about 13:30 so I went for a hot chocolate and the last slice of my delicious fruit cake. And that gave me an idea.

One of the things that I’d noticed was after having fed the sourdough mother the other day, I noticed that for the very first time, it had risen spectacularly and the jar was full of gas.

Now one of the problems with my sourdough bread is that it doesn’t rise enough and it’s all rather damp and heavy like a cake. And so I prepared a sourdough dough mix and added all of my fruit and nut mix to it, including a couple of ripe bananas, and left it on one side.

If it doesn’t rise very much and ends up like a cake, as it seems to be doing right now, it won’t make any difference and it’ll still taste just as good with all of the fruit in it and I won’t be inconvenienced. And it’ll be a good opportunity to practice.

Having done that, I fed the sourdough again and put that on one side too.

When I’d been in LIDL last I’d bought a traditional ginger spice cake with nuts (completely vegan of course) because I have no Christmas cake this year with Liz being away. On Saturday I’d bought some marzipan so this afternoon I sprinkled my rolling pad with icing sugar and then rolled out a lump of marzipan until it was very thin.

While a couple of spoonfuls of strawberry jam were slowly melting in a saucepan over a very low heat, then using the cake as a template, I cut five slices of marzipan out of the bit that I’d rolled, for the top, the two sides and the two ends.

With the jam now nice and liquid and runny, I painted the 5 faces of the cake with a nice thick layer of the warm jammy liquid and then pressed the marzipan to it so it was now all covered (except for the base). That’s now going to cool and set for 72 hours and then I’m going to try to ice it.

By now it was time for me to go off on my afternoon walk around the headland to see what was happening.

And there were quite a few people out there today having a wander around on the last weekend before Christmas, and even a couple of intrepid wetsuit-clad paddle-boarders having a go at practising their art. It looks as if one of them didn’t quite make it out to sea, but I imagine that he’ll remount and have another go at joining his friend at some point.

There’s a seagull out there that isn’t all that pleased about what has been going on and is expressing its displeasure at one of the paddle-boarders. And we know all about their accuracy

While I was out there having a good look around, I noticed some movement right out at the north-eastern extremity of the Ile de Chausey.

It was very difficult to see what was happening with the naked eye so I took a long distance photograph to crop and enlarge when I returned home so that I might be able to see what it might be.

What was going through my mind was that it might be either Thora or Normandy Trader coming into port on an additional run, but in actual fact, it’s one of the larger of the trawlers from the port out there doing a little bit of fishing or whatever in that little corner.

From there I wandered off along the path towards the lighthouse, but there wasn’t very much going on that way. And so I wandered off across the lawn and then the car park and round to the end of the headland.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we’ve seen quite a few good sunsets over here just recently. With us reaching the shortest day of the year I was hoping that we would have a good view of the sun at its perigee and today I was not going to be disappointed at all. It’s not as good as one or two that we have seen, but it’s certainly better than most.

No ships or anything like hat out at sea so I wandered off again on my walk.

But then I didn’t really advance very far before I stopped again.

We’ve seen plenty of fishing boat out at sea today, but it’s not just at sea that there’s a pile of fishing going on. Even though we are not at the period of the Grand Marée there are even so a few people down there taking part in the peche à pied this afternoon.

They were throwing a few things into a bucket, so I watched for a few minutes and then wandered off myself down the path. We still had our two boats in the chantier navale, the yacht and the fishing boat that arrived yesterday, and nothing else.

While I was out there looking down on the chantier navale, my train of thought was interrupted by my being overflown.

We’ve had plenty of people on land, and plenty of people out at sea, so there is no reason at all why we shouldn’t have plenty of people in the air. Today, it’s the turn of a Piper PA-28-181 Archer III, registration number F-GHYZ.

As far as I can tell, it’s a machine owned by the Rennes Air Club and according to its flight plan, it’s on its way to Rennes St Jacques Airport.

And so I wandered on home and made myself a nice hot mug of coffee to keep me going.

It was time for me to think about a puddling for next week. With plenty of cooking apples on hand, I made myself a small apple crumble. And with some crumble left over, I made a second, smaller one.

Earlier on in the day I’d taken out a dollop of dough from the freezer. By now it was defrosted so I kneaded it properly, mixed it around and then rolled it out and put it into the pizza tray, folding the overhanging edges back inside.

With an hour or so to spare I came back in here and had a play around with a few things that needed doing and did my Welsh homework for the day again.

When the pizza base had risen, I put on the oven and brought it to temperature and bunged in the apple crumbles. While the crumbles were doing, I prepared my pizza and when the apple crumble were cooked, I took them out and then put the pizza in.

While the pizza was cooking, I went out for my evening walk and runs. All the way down to the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord.

Earlier on, we saw the photo of all of the fishing boats out there this evening. Plenty more than were shown on the photograph as I mentioned, but there was something else that caught my eye.

This particular light here is something quite out of the ordinary and I’ve no idea at all as to what it might be. It’s not likely to be a fishing work light this close to the rocks at the Pointe du Roc. But nevertheless, there were still a couple of other lights in the background from other fishing boats making their way into the harbour.

While I was standing at the viewpoint at the Rue du Nord, I did my impression of Lord Darnhall’s wife at the sermon in the church on the first holiday of the year, and cast my eye about.

And here’s a thing that caught my eye too. I’ve no idea what this might be but there was some kind of light going on and off on the beach down below at the foot of the steps. There didn’t seem to be anyone standing around down there with it and after a few minutes, the light failed to come on again and that was that.

From there, I pushed on along the Rue du Nord, breaking into a run as much as I could. And then I disappeared down the path underneath the walls, avoiding the puddles.

Halfway along the footpath I stopped at my usual place to catch my breath, and there I looked out to sea.

It was reasonably clear on the horizon and so I had a try at taking another delayed-exposure photograph or two (or three or four with all kinds of different settings) of the general area in which lies St Helier. Most of them ended up filed under “CS” but one of them was worth another look, although I’ve taken many better photos than these.

You can’t actually see the street lights of the town down here but the red light on the radio mast at the back of the town is clearly visible on the photo, even if it wasn’t visible with the naked eye.

From there, I walked on down to the end of the path – forgetting to break into a run which was rather disappointing.

Across the Square Maurice Marland I ran, right away to the far side. From there, before I walked up to the top of the walls, I looked back across the square back towards where this leg of the run began and I have to say that I’ve not really appreciated the view from this viewpoint and so I decided to take a photograph from here looking backwards.

Down in the Rue Notre Dame I met Minette‘s mum so we had a chat for a while and then I ran on home.

By now, my pizza was properly cooked so I sat down and ate it, having photographed it first with my apple crumble.

No pudding tonight again of course – the pizza was quite filling and I didn’t need anything else to eat. And then I came back in here to write up my notes for the day.

Tomorrow I have my radio programme to do. I want to finish off the live concert for the month of February and then do a live concert for the month of March. If there’s time again, there’s the month of April to do and then we’ll be right bang up to date.

While I’m in Leuven, if I can do 2, or even 3 radio programme’s worth of music and then deal with the speech when I return, I’ll be well away with where I would like to be. 20 weeks ahead is ideal because if I have plans to do anything over the summer, although I don’t quite know what or whether we’ll even be able to do anything anyway, there will be a breathing space for me to have a little break.

And I can’t say that I don’t need one.

Monday 16th November 2020 – PHEW! THAT WAS HOT!

With having a pile of left-over mushrooms from the weekend, this evening I made a curry with some lentils, a pepper and the leftover mushrooms.

And into it I tipped a jar of the Vindaloo sauce that I’d bought from NOZ.

All I can say that tonight I’ll be putting the toilet roll in the fridge and I shall be doing so again and again etc., as there are four more helpings for the freezer. I hope that they will actually freeze and not defrost the rest of the stuff in the freezer instead.

So while you admire the photos of a much calmer sea tonight, this morning I missed the third alarm – but only by five minutes. I was up and about pretty promptly.

After the medication I attacked the Radio programme that I had promised to do. And by 14:20 I’d finished – all done and dusted. And I could have finished earlier too had I made up my mind much quicker to save 11 seconds rather than to add in an additional 3 seconds. And there was even a pause for lunch too with some of my beautiful new bread.

Next task was to listen to the dictaphone. And it’s no surprise that I overslept this morning. It just amazes me that I returned home from my travels as quickly as I did.

I was at home again last night. It was about 04:00 in the morning and I had to go to the bathroom. When I went in there our bath had been transformed into a bed and someone had set up a little camp table with computer on it working away in the bathroom as if we had visitors for the night. So I did what I had to do and later I had to go for a walk uptown to do something, so off we set, me and some other guy. He was some high official of the European Union, something like that. We had a chat and he gradually eased out of his shell, I eased out of mine and we did what we had to do. On the way back we had problems crossing the road. I had to stick my head round a corner, tell him when it was clear then we’d both run for it, which was what we did. We walked on a little further and there was this beautiful view over what looked as if it might be Stoke on Trent right across the city centre. I said to him “I wish I’d brought my camera with me”. We walked on back towards the office and by now this guy had changed into a girl a bit like Malou only it wasn’t Malou but that type of girl. We were having a chat and she came out with a quote while we were chatting that I immediately recognised. I said something like “it’s not every day that I get to go walking around with another Emerson Lake and Palmer fan”. She smiled and we started talking about music and life when we were probably both the same teenagers in the early 70s. Then it drifted on to I was about to get on stage and perform with my group. I awoke in a feverish sweat again.

The room that we were in was very bare and spartan and my friend made a comment about it so I replied with something or other and he or she replied again (and what that was all about I really have no idea)

I was reading a book talking about new all kinds of different things, a transport book and there was a photo of a bus going through through the streets of Dublin. When I looked it was a peculiar pink colour with grey writing and I thought “I’ve seen that livery before” – in fact I have some AAA batteries like it. I suddenly realised that I’d done some work for someone in Conwy once. He ran a night club and there was a rumour going around that he’d bought a coach and it was that colour and we’d seen coaches in two other places on the North Wales coast like in Saltney and somewhere else that might have been Rhyl. I showed it to a couple of people and we had a chat about it. We thought “well, maybe he’s going to start some kind of big bus service. I thought “he might have told me when I was working there. I might have been interested in staying to deal with that

I had to go out and I took this girl with me. We were in a MkV Cortina estate. We reached the sub-post office and I parked in the street. She went to do her task but came out and said that she had to wait hours for this so I had to loiter around. I suddenly realised that I was parked right outside the door of someone whom I wanted to see and the door was opening. Some guy walked out and walked off. Then another guy walked out, the one whom I didn’t want to see but I was hiding in the car so he wouldn’t see me so I didn’t see where he went. I realised that the car was parked about 3 feet from the kerb so I put it into the kerb nicely, which meant that the car behind me was now sitting 3 feet out in the road. I waited, and the next thing that I remembered, I was right down the far end of the street about a mile away. I thought “she’ll be wanting to go home soon so I set out to walk. At the traffic lights at the top of Broad Street there were some kids playing around on like a shop from there. 3 kids in heavily-laden pickups squealing the tyres and doing handbrake turns much to the annoyance of a couple of neighbours. Then an old BAS motorbike went past with a boy and girl on it. He did a wheelie then flipped it as if he was going to perform a somersault but the wheel came off it and flew off down the street. They landed in a heap in the road and I couldn’t help bursting out laughing. “Serve them right”. I reached the car but there was no sign of this girl now. 1 thing that I had noticed was that in this street there was about a dozen MkIII Cortinas. “This is strange”. There was no sign of this girl so I went to telephone her but I couldn’t make my telephone work. There was a pile of soup in it. Every time I pressed the switch to wake up the battery nothing happened. I wondered how I was going to contact this girl now.

We’d been all over Crewe, a group of us and it’s been a long time since we’ve done this during the night. There was me, and certainly Jackie and Alison. We’d been checking out all of these student houses on Underwood Lane. Jackie decided that she needed to go home for something so we’d all meet up in some kind of café. I went with her. She had this bright yellow van pretty similar to Caliburn. They’d all asked me if they could view where Caliburn was, and I was trying to think of it, apart from leaving a telephone active in the van I couldn’t think. A variety of suggestions came up but this telephone was the best but I didn’t have a modern up-to-date 3G telephone spare. So we set off and pulled in on this car park. Hans was there at a table with a girl from school. I said her name but it wasn’t her and I couldn’t think of her real name. The girl I was with – it could have been either Jackie or Alison said something like “she used to live with a guy” and mumbled his name “but now she’s back with her parents”. I asked “who was the guy” so she mumbled the name again but I still didn’t get it. Then she said that she had to visit the bathroom so off she went. I was thinking that I ought to have a word with Hans for if that girl is free I wouldn’t mind a date with her. Just then he came past so I said “hi”. He said “ahh, I have a couple of friends in here today then have I?”. In the meantime I was waiting for this girl to come back from the bathroom in this café place. There was a woman rattling on the door – she’d obviously been quite a long time and I wondered “had she fallen in?”. It was all becoming rather confused. I could hear voices but they weren’t hers. I was wondering “what on earth is happening now?”

In between all of this I went for a walk around the headland

Just for a change there wasn’t anything at all going on this afternoon, either on the sea or on the land.

The only thing of any note was these people out on the rocks at the Pointe du Roc for the peche à pied. And it’s a surprise that they are there because with the confinement there’s a ban on the peche à pied right now.

And that was that, really. Not even anyone parking illegally in the vicinity of the College Malraux. In fact I even managed to fit in a run along the path on top of the cliffs overlooking the port.

And then I came on home to carry on with the dictaphone notes.

Throughout the day I’ve been talking to my friend with Covid. She’s now out of her time but still having to isolate as other members of her family are still affected. And that’s probably the hardest part of her life right now. It’s enough to make anyone depressed.

And Liz too. She and Terry are in Lanzarote right now, trying to work out whether they ought to come home or to stick out the virus where they are. I know exactly what I would do if it were me.

What with one thing and another I only had half an hour on the guitars and then I went to make my vindaloo, followed by some lovely apple crumble and vegan ice cream.

rather later than usual, I went out for my evening runs and walks around the walls.

There was no-one about at all so I could carry out my runs in relative comfort. I stopped off at the viewpoint halfway along the walls to take a photo of the lights of Donville les Bains in the distance, and then ran on all the way to the viewpoint overlooking the Place Marechal Foch to see how the sea was doing now that the storm had died down. I’m definitely doing my best to keep fit.

Having dealt with that, I ran off across the Square Maurice Marland and then walked along the walls towards home.

There was a really nice view across to the fish processing plant tonight, and we had a trawler down there unloading.

There’s a refrigerated lorry parked there in the loading bay too. He’ll be buzzing off to Paris tonight in time to be on the wholesale market for the restaurants in the small hours of tomorrow morning. Round to the other side, the door to the plant was wide open and the lights were reflecting quite brightly from the water down there.

From there I ran on home to write up my notes for the day and then go to bed ready for my Welsh course tomorrow.

And I have to make some more cordial because I’ve just this evening finished off the last of the lemon and ginger. I’ve plenty of oranges lying around so I’ll make an orange and ginger one for a change.

So now, later than I would like, I’m off to bed. I wonder where I’ll end up tonight.

Sunday 15th November 2020 – I DIDN’T GO …

… to bed until about 2:00 this morning. But even so, not awakening until 11:15 is a bit extreme nevertheless, and the least said about not getting out of bed until 12:00 the better.

So while you admire the photos that I took tonight of the storm and the waves smashing into the promenade at the Plat Gousset in the storm, I was listening to the dictaphone

I could hear that I had been been on my travels during the night. But I’ll spare you all of the gory details seeing as you are probably having your tea right now. But interestingly, at some point I must have stepped right back into wherever it is that I had left off because I was talking to a guy about the first part of my voyage. He asked “how did you know that she was telling the truth? Which Government would allow that kind of thing?”. I said that there is only one Government in the whole wide world that would do that kind of thing and that’s the British Government. They are employing all of their wives and mistresses as aides and sleeping with all of their aides who aren’t their wives and mistresses”. We had a talk about all of their morals in the UK after that.

And that wasn’t all either. Later on there were more things happening but unfortunately it was just a jumbled mishmash and I can’t remember it. Which is probably just as well.

After my medication I switched on the computer. My Covid friend was on line so we had quite a lengthy chat to keep up her morale and then I went off for something to eat. A nice piping hot bowl of porridge.

After my porridge I’ve spent all day baking as I mentioned yesterday. Supplies are running low round here. There isn’t enough bread for my sandwiches tomorrow and I’m not going to have the time to bake any in the morning with a radio programme to prepare.

For a start, I needed some more bread and it was far too late now to make a sourdough loaf which needs a lot of standing, so I made a yeast loaf as I have done in the past with a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds.

There was no pizza dough left in the freezer so I had to make some more. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I’d bought a 2 kg bag of prepared bread flour “just add water” from Belgium the other day for just €1:00. It’s white flour, which is not much use for bread baking, but it would be ideal for pizzas.

And so I made a pile of dough, 450 grammes, to see how it would perform. If it works out well I might look out for some more for my pizzas.

Taking a pause from my baking activities I went out for my afternoon walk while the dough was proofing, straight into the teeth of the howling gale that seemed to have whipped up in intensity from last night.

Clutching hard to my hat, I went over to the sea wall to look at the waves that were breaking on the shore over there. And the whitecaps out there bear full testimony to the force of the gale.

The other people around (there were three or four out there) were just as impressed as I was and so after watching them for quite a while as I did, I set off around the headland on my walk.

It was certainly interesting to watch the waves on the north side of the headland, so I was intrigued to see what they might be like on the south side in the bay by St Pair sur Mer.

And I wasn’t to be disappointed either. As i reached the peak of the headland the wind was thoroughly wicked and there was a veritable gale blowing straight into my face. As I walked around the headland I could see that the storm raging down there was even more wild that it had been round on the north side.

The contrast between the sea out there in the open and the sea in the sheltered lee of the harbour’s outer wall is quite impressive. You could almost draw a straight line between the two.

The tide is still well out right now but with the force of the waves being driven onshore by the wind I was expecting to see something rather impressive with the waves against the sea wall.

And unfortunately it wasn’t as wild as I was expecting it to be. The waves and the spray were not flying up over the sea wall as I was hoping, but there was still something to see. The waves were giving me something of a little performance.

The guy out there walking around on the sea wall was not going to be in any danger of a drenching when he comes round to this side. But he was the only person other than me involved in the scene.

From there I pushed on along the footpath down to the viewpoint overlooking the harbour.

The tide was out as we had seen in the earlier photo, and there was this beautiful dry patch there which the seagulls had decided to colonise for the moment.

What caught my eye particularly about it was the fact that this looked very much like a representation of a map of the United Kingdom. You can see the mainland of Great Britain and over to the upper left, something that looks as if it might be Northern Ireland. The resemblance was quite uncanny.

And so I headed on for home in the wind to carry on with my baking.

The dough had risen really nicely for both the bread and the pizza dough. This flour stuff from Belgium seemed to work quite well.

The pizza dough I separated into three. Two of them I kneaded and rolled in oil, and then put them into greaseproof paper into the freezer. The third one I kneaded, greased and then rolled out and put into the pizza tray, rolling over the edges to remain in the tray and not overhang.

The bread dough, I kneaded and shaped and put into the mould and left it on one side with the pizza base on the tray to proof again.

The baking apples that I had bought a few weeks ago were on their last legs so I washed them and diced them and prepared an apple crumble. Some cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, desiccated coconut and raisins will do all of the apple some good, especially when washed in with some lemon juice.

While the crumble and the bread (which was now ready) were baking in the oven I prepared the pizza and once the bread and crumble were baked I could put the pizza in. I must buy a bigger oven one of these days.

And here are the finished products. The pizza came out really well and the edges where I’d folded them over were nice and spongy. As for the bread and the crumble I’ll tell you about them tomorrow. I was too full for any pudding tonight.

later on I went out for my evening walk and runs, some of which were chasing after the lens hood of my camera that rolled off down the street in the wind. And wind there was too. It was extremely difficult to open the door of the building with the wind holding it closed.

At the viewpoint there was nothing much going on so I ran on in several legs down to the viewpoint where you saw the photos of the waves crashing down on the Plat Gousset.

No-one about at all again so I ran on across the Square Maurice Marland, walked around the rest of the walls and then ran on home to write up my notes for the day. By now the wind had picked up even more and I had to abort my final run halfway through as the wind brought me to a dead halt.

Tomorrow it’s back to work. I have a radio programme to prepare.

When that’s done I need to enquire about Caliburn and then swot up my Welsh for our next lesson on Tuesday. Not that I’m going to have an early night now, but I’ll do the best that I can.

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 – NOW HERE’S A THING .

For much of the morning, ever since I awoke, I had a song – the title track from the album ZOOROPA – going round and round in my head.

When I’d finished doing what I had to do I switched on the music here. There are somewhere between 8,000 and 9,000 tracks on my computer and the playlist is set to “automatic random”. And the first track that came up on the playlist was, of course, the title track from the album ZOOROPA.

That was uncanny – if not eerie.

Doing what I had to do didn’t take all that long this morning because there wasn’t all that much to do. When I listened to the dictaphone, I discovered that it was rather like my bank account right now – nothing in it.

That means that I can’t have gone anywhere last night – something that surprised me completely, and for two reasons.

I had an early night last night
I treated myself to a lie-in this morning – to wit – I didn’t leave my stinking pit until about 08:30

You would have thought that with an early night like that I would have gone off for miles.

With nothing to download, I did take full advantage and transcribed another pile of the arrears. Now there’s just a handful left and hopefully I can deal with them tomorrow.

“Hopefully” is the correct word too because I’m going to be busy. I have to make some bread quite early on and leave it to proof while I’m out at the shops. Then, of course, I have to come back and bake it.

Something else that I did this morning was to attack a pile of the photos from my trip up the Brittany coast in Spirit of Conrad. We’re now just pulling into the harbour at St Cast le Guildo where we spent out third night on board

After lunch I set about doing some tidying up in the bedroom. Much of the time was spent sorting through a large pile of post that I’d brought back from the Auvergne.

Mixed up in there was all kinds of stuff that I’d wished that I’d found two years ago and which would have saved me a lot of effort.

But at least you can walk around the bedroom without walking on anything and you don’t have to move anything to go anywhere else. It’ll be even better tomorrow after I’ve had another go at it and put some more stuff away.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that the other evening we saw another heavy machine parked up in the Place du Parvis Notre Dame and I mentioned that I would look out for where it’s working.

Here at the side of the church there’s another roofing job going on. They have ripped off the slates and the old laths and are currently fitting new laths.

And helping them in the task is the big machine that we saw the other evening. So now we know.

Mind you, I don’t envy the men up there on that scaffolding. It’s freezing cold this afternoon, quite a dramatic drop over the last couple of days and there’s quite a gale blowing. Definitely not the weather to be up there.

And so it’s hardly surprising that there was no-one about having an afternoon walk.

It had it all to myself – to such an extent that seeing as the footpath under the walls was in the shelter out of the wind I ran all the way down the path.

But this is what I call courage. As I said, the weather has turned and it’s just like winter outside this afternoon. But these brave souls have brought their fold-up chairs and are sitting there on the beach evidently enjoying the weather.

And so are the seagulls too by the looks of things. They are evidently waiting for exciting things to happen but I think that they might well be in for a long wait.

No-one in the Square Maurice Marland either so I had a good run all the way across there too.

But there was plenty of activity in the port this afternoon. I noticed that the big crane was in operation so i wondered if one of the Channel island freighters, Thora or Normandy Trader, was in port.

But it was nothing to do with them at all. Two of the town’s trawlers, Coelacanthe and her little sister Tiberiade were moored up in the unloading bay this afternoon and the crane was busy relieving them of their trawl nets.

Whether they are to be repaired (because we’ve seen plenty of sailors sewing up trawl nets in the harbour) or to be replaced remains to be seen.

But it looks as if Normandy Trader will be in port some time soon. I’ve heard that the company that owns her has bought a lorry to do its own transporting, and the the one that I saw in a photo looks pretty much like that one down there.

There’s still more excitement down there as well.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall seeing throughout the summer the Big Wheel in the car park down in the Place Godal. But there it is – gone! A sure sign that the summer season is finished.

My walk around the walls continued and as there was still no-one about I ran the final few hundred metres back home.

After I came back I recorded another album with the USB turntable. But I must remember not to go banging about while I do it. I’d completely forgotten about the effect that knocking the turntable has on the LP that’s playing, and I had to re-record one of the sides to eliminate the jumping about.

Thinking about it (which I do quite often these days) it’s been 20 years or so since I’ve played an LP. I didn’t have it set up in Expo, I’m sure of that.

After the guitar, I had tea. Taco rolls and rice, using the left-over stuffing with some kidney beans in it. And the rest of my apple crumble with some vegan chocolate ice cream. While I’m baking the bread tomorrow I’ll make a rice pudding too.

I can also cook a sheep’s head, and if I leave the eyes in it, that’ll see me through the week.

Outside tonight, I didn’t hang around. If I thought that the wind was bad outside this afternoon, it was totally wicked this evening.

The people on board Joly France, the ferry that goes out to the Ile de Chausey who were returning from the island will have known all about the crossing, that’s for sure. They were being tossed around like corks.

And that reminds me of the time that I was on board a cross-Channel ferry with Percy Penguin once, bringing back a coach from France. This was 1992 and there was a hurricane in the Channel and the crossing took 19 hours as we couldn’t get into port.

One guy was leaning over the rails “feeding the fishes” quite dramatically.
“The trouble with you” I said “is that you have a weak stomach!”
“Weak stomach rubbish!” he retorted. “I’m throwing it as far as everyone else!”

Despite everything, I’ve managed three runs this evening too, so what with 6 altogether today I’m feeling quite impressed with myself.

But tomorrow should be a better day. Cooking the rice pudding, baking the bread, making some more cordial and going shopping too. I suppose that I ought to have a look at making this kefir and kombucha too, seeing as I have had the book for two years, the container for 12 months and the powder for 6 months

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 – I DON’T KNOW …

… what happened today but I’ve felt better and accomplished more today than I have done for quite some considerable time.

And it wasn’t the coffee at midday that fired me up either because I was well on my way long before then.

In fact, I was once more up and – well, not exactly about but up nevertheless – before the third alarm.

Last night I had my cars dotted around in 3 or 4 lock-ups or buildings in this old factory place. I was waiting there because we were all about to go off with Adventure Canada again. People suddenly started leaving, swarming off to the reception area so I followed them. i was chatting to a load of people about the Arctic, saying how much I liked it, listing all the times that I’d been. People were really impressed that I’d been so often. When I got towards the meeting point I could see Jerry there. I asked “what number am I, Jerry? I don’t know and I can’t find a list and I can’t think”. He had a look and replied “Eric, you’re n°71 – you have a long time to wait yet”. I went back to my unit and was sorting through some wheels. There was one that matched THE A60 VAN THAT I HAD YEARS AGO so I went to put that back in the back of the vehicle. There I was thinking that I was short of wellingtons but there were about 5 pairs and various other pairs of shoes, loads of other stuff like that in the back of the van. It was all looking pretty good in there with all the stuff. Then the thought occurred to me that when I’m called I’m going to have to take a Ford Anglia with me – a 100E model but I would never ever get it through the personnel door. It would be absolutely impossible to get it out through the vehicle door because there was so much stuff in the way. How was I going to do that? Would I have to get the vehicle out sideways on its side and slide it through the personnel door? Would it fit? I was busy thinking about all of this and I awoke in a fever.
There was another voyage last night too, this one involving an old sailing ship, something like Marité. I knew that there would be some kids on it but that’s pretty much everything that I can remember now. I can’t remember anything else.

And having done that, I actually excelled myself by dealing with another batch of the arrears and we are now down to single figures.

Having dealt with that I did a little (only a little) tidying up and then had a good look over my Welsh notes ready for my lesson.

There were just three of us at class today so it was pretty intense and fast-paced. And to my surprise, not only did I manage to keep up with it, I found that I could remember much more than I thought that I did.

This afternoon I cracked on with the radio programme and that’s actually finished now. I missed out on one of my guitar sessions but I would rather finish the programme and worry about the guitar rather than the other way round.

There was the usual break mid-afternoon for my walk around the headland.

There were quite a few people out there enjoying the walk, and the brats were there orienteering too. There’s also a big change in the chantier navale too. The Ten Green Bottles that were hanging on the wall in there have now reduced themselves to Five.

But strangely, while that was the situation in there, there was nothing much else going on involving boats. The fog of yesterday had lifted somewhat, so at least I could see that there was nothing out there at all.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a while ago I posted a photo of a strange van that has been transformed into a mobile home, with an advert on the side seeking a (female) companion to accompany the owner on his travels.

The van is now back and the adverts (slightly differently-worded than before) are still on the side and the rear door. Here’s clearly not had much luck in his quest.

Back here I finished off the radio programme and then had half an hour on the guitar before tea.

Tonight I made falafel with steamed vegetables and vegan cheese sauce followed by some more of the apple crumble. That’s almost all gone now. Tomorrow will see it off and as I’ll be baking more bread on Thursday I’ll make a rice pudding for a couple of days.

This evening I went out for a walk and my usual runs, and ran slap bang into a young-adult orienteering competition, followed by a group of people having a late-night conducted tour of the walls.

All of this rather cramped my style and while I managed my three runs, the photos that I took didn’t come out well enough. The ones that I wanted to take, I couldn’t as there were too many people in the shot.

It’s rather early now and I’ve already finished what I wanted to do. i’ve not had a day like this for quite a while. I know that there will be a downside to all of this but I hope that it won’t be for a while.

There’s a lot of catching up that I need to do.

Monday 21st September 2020 – I DUNNO …

… what happened today but this was one of the best days that I’ve has for some considerable time. And that has surprised me as much as it’s probably surprised you.

It started off with me being out of bed before the third alarm went off and it’s been a while since that has happened.

Plenty of time though to go off on a few travels. I was with a group of policewomen last night and they were doing a house-to-house visit down this road enquiring about bicycles for some reason, asking if the bicycles present belonged to the people there. They worked their way down this road and came to the final house, a fine stone 3-storey house built of granite blocks, a bit run-down, unkempt and so on. She said “right, this is the house here”. She went up and knocked on the door and spoke to someone – another guy – about it. he was in fact Derek Nimmo. I went for a wander round to look at the side of this house while she was talking. When I came back, my partner had transformed into Marianne, she and someone else arguing with this Derek Nimmo type and he was being extremely difficult. It turned out that there had been some kind of collision between Marianne and him in a car. She’d gone to have a form signed, one of these constats. He was of extremely bad grace, doing all kinds of lecturing, all of that. They wrote out this form but in the end he just picked it up and tore it up and gave it back to her, then hit her. That got me extremely angry. I stormed over there and even though he was a good foot taller than me I gave him an absolute lecture “no-one ever hits a woman in my presence”, all of this kind of thing. If he wanted to hit someone he could start by hitting me. I awoke quite feverish again.
Later in the night I found myself busy dictating again to my hand and not my dictaphone. This is becoming rather too much of a habit as well. But it seems that last night there were concerns that German commercial and public television was not being prosecuted over its failure to examine footage of demonstrations that it had filmed in 2009 involving I think Martin Luther King which could have resulted in criminal prosecutions being brought against people who were mishandling the demonstrators. This in turn led to all kinds of demonstrations. There were people everywhere chanting and so on and the forces of law and order moved in. For some reason I was with them and we were gradually pushing these demonstrators back. We had them crowded up on some kind of top row of steps but no-one seemed to be doing anything to move them any further so I gave them a big push. 4 or 5 people at rhe far end fell off the steps down to the next level. That was basically when the demonstrators abandoned the protest and we could move freely up. I went to have a look at the other end of these steps. It was quite a drop over the end, about 10 or 12 feet, but 1 or 2 people were thinking that this is the best way to get away from the police so they dropped over the edge at the back. I thought “how was I going to get away from here?”. My only solution was to drop over the edge at the back as well so I had a look. It seemed to be very high to me. I didn’t really want to jump over that. I thought that I could dangle down from my hands from the top and let go, slide down but that still looked an overwhelming drop for me. It was steeper in some places than others. Perhaps I could find a lower place I’d be more comfortable doing it.

Once I’d transcribed all of that I had another back at the arrears and after a good session on that, I’ve whittled it down to just 13 remaining. With a bit of luck (not that I have too much of that these days) I’ll finish it on Friday or something like that.

That took more time than it ought to have done, and the rest of the day has been spent working on the next radio programme, not having overlooked to post this week’s off.

By the time that I knocked off for my guitar sessions, I’d chosen all the music except the last one, combined them in pairs as usual, written the text, dictated it, started to edit it and even prepared the speech for my invited guest.

The afternoon walk was a bit depressing today. Gribouille the big ginger cat was there for his afternoon stroke and one of my neighbours was out there, so we had a good chat together.

But that was basically all that was interesting. There was nothing much happening out in the English Channel today – or, at least – if there was, I couldn’t see it.

That’s because even though we had that thunder and lightning storm last night, today was shrouded in fog and we couldn’t see very much at all out to sea.

It reminded me of that British newspaper headline in the 1920s – “fog in the Channel – Continent cut off!” which just about sums up the insularity of the xenophobic Brits.

nevertheless, the fog didn’t prevent everyone from doing their own thing this afternoon.

My walk took me around the headland and there by the seafarers’ memorial there were a couple of zodiacs down there in the Baie de Mont St Michel with a group of fishermen in each one.

You can see just how foggy it is. Le Loup, the marker light for the entrance to the harbour is just about visible but you can’t see very much at all beyond there.

And so I continued on around the path but there was nothing at all of interest to see so I wandered on home.

After the guitars, I had tea. A stuffed pepper tonight followed by apple crumble – at least, the part of the apple crumble that I didn’t drop on the floor.

There was a little wave of fatigue (the first of the day but not actually a crashing-out) but I fought it off by going for my evening walk.

And outside on my travels I didn’t see a soul. It was just like one of these North American ghost towns and I was expecting any minute to see a tumbleweed blowing through the Porte St Jean and off down the street.

But it looked so photogenic tonight that I had to take a photo of it yet again. Only this time there are no traffic lights or road signs to obscure the view.

Down along the Rue du Nord I walked, in splendid isolation, and then ran on down the footpath.

No-one around in the Square Maurice Marland either so I could run all the way down there too.

But my eye was caught by a very slender new moon up in the sky tonight so I had a little fun trying to photograph it. But I was intrigued by the green light to the left of the moon. I couldn’t see it with the naked eye.

But in a couple of the other photos that I took, it wasn’t there either. The only thing that I can think of was that although I couldn’t hear anything, a low-flying aeroplane travelling from left to right was going past at that moment and I was lucky enough to press the button just as the plane’s flashing navigation light was illuminated.

So how do we know that the plane was going from left to right and not right to left? The answer is that there are five letters in green, and five letters in right.

Port is red, and there are four letters in “port”, just as there are in “left”. So if the aeroplane was travelling from right to left, we would see the red light.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we are constantly seeing all kinds of building repairs, roadworks and the like going on in the old medieval walled city quite regularly.

It looks as if we are in for another batch of work starting quite soon. Some time during the day this large piece of mobile plant has appeared and is parked up in the Parvis Notre Dame.

It’s going to be interesting to see where they will be working and what they will be doing. It’s a good job that I don’t have to drive through the old town on my way around.

But while I was there looking at the machinery I had a look behind me.

Not that there was anything of any interest going on there but the Rue Notre Dame but the view made a very good photo this evening.

From here I walked on around the walls and then ran on home. Three runs again today and I’m hoping that I can keep this going. It’s not as athletic as I was in the Spring and early Summer before I was ill but if I can keep this up I’ll be happy.

Welsh class tomorrow so I need to be on good form. An early night will do me a world of good.

Tuesday 15th September 2020 – DESPITE NOT …

… doing everything that I wanted to do, I’ve still had an extremely busy and active day today. I’ve never stopped and, even more surprisingly, I didn’t crash out either. That’s not really a surprise – it’s a shock!

So while you admire some photos of this evening’s beautiful sunset, let me mention that while once more I missed the third alarm, it was only by a matter of seconds and I was immediately up and sitting on the edge of the bed.

Mind you, it did take me a few minutes to collect my thoughts and summon up the strength to move, but that’s par for the course these days.

During the night I was in my old office in Prince Albert Street. I’d had a shave and a wash but the hairs that I had shaved off my face weren’t flushing down the drain of the sink. There was a young guy sitting there by the side of the sink waiting for me to finish but I was just taking longer and longer and longer because of these hairs. In the end I told him that I was ready to get up but I can’t leave it like this because of the hairs. He said “let me have a look” and he tried to move it as well. He said “what you need is a new sink because the capacity on this isn’t enough. We need to go along and get another sink” which I thought was silly because they just don’t issue sinks like this but off we went, clambering over a few items into the main office and out again over another pile of stores. We were asked what we were looking for and we explained about the new sink. Someone said “you’ll be really lucky finding a new sink like this. You want to try a new plug hole”.

A few more of the arrears from the dictaphone disappeared too which is good news as I slowly catch up.

After that, I tidied up in the kitchen and the dining area. We have our Welsh lesson this morning and that’s on line. I don’t really want people to see the chaos in which I live these days.

And having put all of that behind me I sat down and did some more revision of the previous course. I’ve forgotten almost everything that I learnt in the Spring.

At least, that’s what I thought because I found that once the lesson started I could actually remember some of the things that I had learned. More than I thought, more than was necessary for our opening session and more than some of my fellow-students.

Interestingly, we have a student from Romania living in Connah’s Quay who is learning Welsh. That’s certainly something quite extraordinary.

Instead of two hours, these lessons are 2.5 hours so we didn’t finish until 13:30. That meant a rather late lunch.

Having used the last of the bread, this afternoon I baked some bread. Some ordinary bread, into which I added a couple of handfuls of sunflower seeds, and also a smaller loaf with a banana, some sultanas and a pile of ground almonds added to it, brushed with soya milk and sprinkled with brown sugar.

While all of that was rising in the corner, I attacked the carrots that I had bought the other day. They were peeled and diced, blanched in boiling water with some bay leaves and then drained and left to dry.

While they were drying, I peeled and diced a lump of ginger into some tiny fragments and then boiled them in some water.

While they were boiling, I peeled the lemons that I had, put them in a whizzer and whizzed them gently to separate the juice. That went onto a glass and then the remainder was thoroughly whizzed round into a pulp and then added to the ginger and water that was boiling. This was then set to simmer.

While the lemon and ginger was simmering away, I went out for my afternoon walk.

It was a beautiful afternoon again, hot and sunny with very little wind. And plenty of people out there too enjoying it. The fishermen were out there as well.

At least, I reckon that they are fishermen because I can’t think of what else they might be doing in those boats down there so close inshore by the diving platform at the Pointe du Roc.

There were quite a few other boats out there too. Not very many yachts today, with it not being weekend, but quite a few others.

Here’s one of our old friends again. She’s La Grande Ancre and she seems to spend much of her time engaged in fishing activity and the rest of the time transporting items out to the Ile de Chausey.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that we saw her go out a year or two back with a tractor on her deck and she’s had many other things to transport as well, although she doesn’t seem to do as much in that line since Chausiais arrived.

But here’s something interesting down there on the rocks.

One thing that I have noticed about the coastline here is that driftwood of any sort is very rare. We haven’t seen anything interesting, despite all the storms that we have. But this down here is the first substantial item that I’ve seen in all the time that I’ve been here.

The kids were out here again playing around on the grass. And I now know what they are doing, because I had a close look. They are having sessions in Orienteering – being given various sets of co-ordinates and running from point-to-point armed with a map and a compass.

Strangely enough, that’s the one thing that I know something about because in 1971 I came 15th in the North West England Schools’ Championship.

And no – there were not only 15 entrants.

But anyway, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the proceedings over the next few weeks to see how they are doing

On that note I wandered off around the headland to the other side of the promontory.

And there’s some excitement today in the Chantier Navale. Over the last week or two there have been as many as seven boats in there and that’s been the most that I have ever seen – up until today, that is.

As I went past this afternoon, I noticed that they had just pulled another fishing boat out of the water with the mobile crane. That’s eight boats in there today and I’ve never ever seen that many at any one time.

So we’ve seen crowds on the land and crowds in the sea. I’m sure that you are all wondering what is going on in the air.

The answer is that despite the apparent lack of wind this afternoon the Bird-Men of Alcatraz were flying around somehow. At one particular moment I counted three of them in the air all at once and I’m not sure how they are keeping aloft.

As an aside, I’ve not had any news about the bird-man who came to grief 10 days ago on the rocks by the tidal pool. I wonder how he’s getting on.

One of the things that features quite regularly on these pages is the question of pathetic parking. The Rue St Pierre by the entrance to the College Malraux at school chucking-out time is notorious in this respect.

But not today.

Obviously the local constabulary is a keen reader of my pages because today we have one of Macron’s Finest on duty keeping an eye on things, including, one assumes, the wild parking.

If everyone can park properly in the free car park round the corner when there’s a copper on duty, why can’t they do it all the time?

Only one thing remained to be done before I could clear off home.

We have a visitor in the harbour this afternoon. One of the Jersey freighters, Normandy Trader, has come into port on the morning tide.

She’s been in a couple of times since we last saw her but the ship is very busy with plenty of work so there have been some really rapid turn-rounds just recently. She’s been in like Flynn and out again on the same tide which means that I’ve not been lucky enough to be present to snatch a photograph.

We’ve not seen Thora, the other Jersey freighter, for a while either. Things must be hotting up with the run-in to Brexit.

Back in the apartment I put the oven on to heat up and when it was warm enough, I bunged the bread inside.

Taking the ginger and lemon mix off the heat, I put it in the whizzer, added two tablespoons of honey and the lemon juice that I had decanted earlier and then whizzed it all around into a nice pulpy syrup. Then put it into a bottle with some turmeric.

When the bread was cooked I tipped the loaves out onto a wire rack to cool down.

And here are the finished product. The bread is cooling down on the rack, the carrots are now freezing nicely in the freezer and the bottle of lemon and ginger cordial is in the fridge.

And the cordial is delicious too. I tried a sample of it just now.

Tea was a burger on a bap with baked potatoes (I did them in the oven while I was baking the bread) followed by apple crumble and soya coconut dessert.

That was the cue to nip out for my evening walk and runs. We’ve seen the beautiful sunset this evening, and I reckoned that while I was out there I would take a photograph of the Rue du Nord and the Place d’Armes.

You can’t see very much of my own building, but in the background to the right is the College Malraux, the local High School.

And, of course, you can see some of the decaying medieval wall that is fenced off to stop people putting themselves at risk by walking close to it.

It’s one of four parts of the wall that are fenced off right now and there seems to be no effort being made to fix them, which is a shame. The whole place is falling to bits.

From the rue du Nord I ran on along the footpath, walked a while to catch my breath and then ran on along the Square Maurice Marland.

While there was nothing particular going on as far as terrestrial objects go, there were huge flocks of birds taking off, flying around in a couple of circles and then landing again – only to take off again and repeating the process ad infinitum.

It’s difficult to make assumptions of course but it seems to me that they are practising their formation flying en masse with all of the young newly-born fledgelings ready for their flight south in a couple of weeks time.

There were hundreds and hundreds circling around, so I stopped and watched them for a while and then ran on home.

But with it being quite light this evening you are probably wondering why I’m out and about so early. The truth is that there’s football on the internet kicking off at 20:45 – Newtown v Caernarfon Town in the JD Cymru (Welsh Premier) League and I wanted to be home in time for the kick-off.

It wasn’t a very exciting match and, to be quite frank, these two teams are not going to be up there challenging for the honours at the end of the season.

The fire has gone out in Caernarfon and their central defence was somewhat conspicuous by its absence. Newtown were probably slightly the better side but their attack was rather wayward and they failed to take full advantage.

However Caernarfon ended up winning 3-2, which surprised me considerably, but it was down to one moment of magic from Paulo Mendes, another from Noah Edwards (aided by some miserable Newtown defending out by the corner flag) and some excellent work from Mike Hayes, who Bala will end up regretting releasing.

It’s now long after 03:00 and I’m still not tired so I’m carrying on working and I’ll switch off the alarms for the morning. I’d written half of the speech for my radio programme this afternoon so I can finish that off and then get on with the internet web lesson that I missed.

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: apple crumble

Sunday 25th April 2021 – THERE’S BEEN SOME …

Saturday 3rd April 2021 – HAVING HAD …

Thursday 1st April 2021 – THERE’S A TIME …

Tuesday 30th March 2021 – HAVING HAD A …

Sunday 28th March 2021 – WHILE YOU ADMIRE …

Thursday 18th February 2021 – THAT WAS A …

Sunday 14th February 2021 – WE’VE SEEN THE …

Saturday 9th January 2021 – TODAY HAS BEEN …

Sunday 20th December 2020 – SHRIMP BOATS …

Monday 16th November 2020 – PHEW! THAT WAS HOT!

Sunday 15th November 2020 – I DIDN’T GO …

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 – NOW HERE’S A THING .

Tuesday 22nd September 2020 – I DON’T KNOW …

Monday 21st September 2020 – I DUNNO …

Tuesday 15th September 2020 – DESPITE NOT …

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